appropriate, not merely because the book portrays human life from a
comic rather than a serious point of view, but also because it is the
antithesis of Dante's _Commedia Divina_. As poet and scene-painter
devised for our ancestors of the Elizabethan period both Mask and
Anti-mask, so did the genius of Italy provide two shows for modern
Europe--the Mask and Anti-mask of human nature. Dante's Comedy
represents our life in relation to the life beyond the grave. Boccaccio
in his Comedy depicts the life of this earth only, subtracting
whatsoever may suggest a life to come. It would be difficult to
determine which of the two dramas is the more truthful, or which of the
two poets had a firmer grasp upon reality. But the realities of the
Divine Comedy are spiritual; those of the Human Comedy are material. The
world of the Decameron is not an inverted world, like that of
Aristophanes. It does not antithesize Dante's world by turning it upside
down. It is simply the same world surveyed from an opposite point of
view--unaltered, uninverted, but seen in the superficies, presented in
the concrete. It is the prose of life; and this justifies the
counterpoise of its form to that of Dante's poem. It is the world as
world, the flesh as flesh, nature as nature, without intervention of
spiritual agencies, without relation to ideal order, regarded as the
sphere of humor, fortune, marvelous caprice. It is everything which the
Church had banned, proscribed, held in abhorrence, without that which
the Church had inculcated for the exaltation of the soul. This world,
actual and unexplained, Boccaccio paints with the mastery of an
accomplished artist, molding its chaotic elements into a form of beauty
which compels attention.
Dante condemned those "who submit their reason to natural appetite."[86]
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. Yet though the Divine Comedy and the
Decameron are antithetical, they are both true, and true together,
inasmuch as they present the same humanity studied under contradictory
conditions. Human nature is vast enough to furnish the materials for
both, inexplicable enough to render both acceptable to reason, tolerant
enough to view with impartial approbation the desolate theology of the
_Inferno_ and the broad mirth of the Decameron.[88]
The Decameron did not appear unheralded by similar attempts. No
literary taste was stronger in the middle ages than the taste for
stories. This is proved by the collection known as _Gesta Romanorum_,
and by the _Bestiarii_, _Lapidarii_, _Physiologi_ and _Apiarii_, which
contain a variety of tales, many of them surprisingly indecent, veiling
spiritual doctrine under obscenities which horrify a modern reader.[89]
From the hands of ecclesiastical compilers these short stories passed
down to popular narrators, who in France made the _fabliaux_ a special
branch of vulgar literature. The follies and vices of the clergy, tricks
practiced by wives upon their husbands, romantic adventures of lovers,
and comic incidents of daily life, formed the staple of their stock in
trade. When the _fabliau_ reached Italy, together with other literary
wares, from France, it was largely cultivated in the South; and the
first known collection of Italian stories received the name of _Il
Novellino_, or _Il Fiore del parlar gentile_. The language of this book
was immature, and the tales themselves seem rather memoranda for the
narrator than finished compositions to be read with pleasure.[90] It may
therefore be admitted that the rude form of the Decameron was given to
Boccaccio. Not to mention the larger chivalrous romances, _Conti di
antichi Cavalieri_, and translations from French _Chansons de Geste_,
which have no genuine link of connection with the special type of the
Novella, he found models for his tales both in the libraries of medieval
convents and upon the lips of popular _raccontatori_. Yet this must not
be taken to imply any lack of originality in Boccaccio. Such comparisons
as Professor Bartoli has instituted between the Decameron and some of
its supposed sources, prove the insignificance of his debt, the
immeasurable inferiority of his predecessors.[91]
The spirit of the Decameron no less than the form, had been long in
preparation. Satire, whether superficial, as in the lays of the
_jongleurs_, or searching, as in the invectives of Dante and Petrarch,
was familiar to the middle ages; and the popular Latin poems of the
wandering students are steeped in rage against a corrupt hierarchy, a
venal Curia.[92] Those same _Carmina Vagorum_ reveal the smoldering
embers of unextinguished Paganism, which underlay the Christian culture
of the middle ages. Written by men who belonged to the clerical classes,
but who were often on bad terms with ecclesiastical authorities,
tinctured with the haughty contempt of learning for the laity, yet
overflowing with the vigorous life of the proletariate, these
extraordinary poems bring to view a bold and candid sensuality, an
ineradicable spontaneity of natural appetite, which is strangely at
variance with the cardinal conceptions of ascetic Christianity.[93] In
the sect of the Italian Epicureans; in the obscure bands of the Cathari
and Paterini; in the joyous companies of Provencal Court and castle, the
same note of irrepressible nature sounded. Side by side with the
new-built fabric of ecclesiastical idealism, the old temples of
unregenerate human deities subsisted. They were indeed discredited,
proscribed, consigned to shame. They formed the _mauvais lieux_ of
Christendom. Yet there they stood, even as the Venusberg of Tannhaeuser's
legend abode unshaken though cathedrals rose by Rhine. All that was
needed to restore the worship of these nature-gods was that a great
artist should decorate their still substantial temple-walls with the
beauty of a new, sincere, and unrepentant style, fitting their abandoned
chambers for the habitation of the human spirit, free now to choose the
dwelling that it listed. This Boccaccio achieved. And here it must again
be noticed that the revolution of time was about to bring man's popular
and carnal deities once more, if only for a season, to the throne. The
murmured songs of a few wandering students were about to be drowned in
the paean of Renaissance poetry. The visions of the Venusberg were to be
realized in Italian painting. The coming age was destined to live out
Boccaccio's Human Comedy in act and deed. This is the true kernel of his
greatness. As poet, he ranked third only, and that at a vast interval,
in the triumvirate of the fourteenth century. But the temper of his
mind, the sphere of his conceptions, made him the representative genius
of the two following centuries. Awaiting the age when science should
once more co-ordinate the forces of humanity in a coherent theory, men
in the Renaissance exchanged superfluous restraint for immoderate
license. It is not to be wondered at that Boccaccio and not Dante was
their hero.
The description of the Plague at Florence which introduces the
Decameron, has more than a merely artistic appropriateness. Boccaccio
may indeed have meant to bring his group of pleasure-seeking men and
maidens into strong relief by contrast with the horrors of the stricken
city. Florence crowded with corpses, echoing to the shrieks of delirium
and the hoarse cries of body-buriers, is the background he has chosen
for that blooming garden, where the birds sing and the lovers sit by
fountains in the shade, laughing or weeping as the spirit of each tale
compels them. But independently of this effect of contrast, which might
be used to illustrate the author's life-philosophy, the description of
the Plague has a still deeper significance, whereof Boccaccio never
dreamed. Matteo Villani dates a progressive deterioration of manners in
the city from the Plague of 1348, and justifies us in connecting the
Ciompi riots of 1378 with the enfeeblement of civic order during those
thirty years. The Plague was, therefore, the outward sign, if not the
efficient cause, of those very ethical and social changes which the
Decameron immortalized in literature. It was the historical landmark
between two ages, dividing the Florence of the Grandi from the Florence
of the Ciompi. The cynicism, liberated in that time of terror,
lawlessness, and sudden death, assumed in Boccaccio's romance a
beautiful and graceful aspect. It lost its harsh and vulgar outlines,
and took the air of genial indulgence which distinguished Italian
society throughout the years of the Renaissance.
Boccaccio selects seven ladies of ages varying from eighteen to
twenty-eight, and three men, the youngest of whom is twenty-five. Having
formed this company, he transports them to a villa two miles from the
city, where he provides them with a train of serving-men and
waiting-women, and surrounds them with the delicacies of medieval
luxury. He is careful to remind us that, though the three men and three
of the ladies were acknowledged lovers, and though their conversation
turned on almost nothing else but passion, "no stain defiled the honor
of the party." Stories are told; and these unblemished maidens listen
with laughter and a passing blush to words and things which outrage
Northern sense of decency. The remorseless but light satire of the
Decameron spares none of the ideals of the age. All the medieval
enthusiasms are reviewed and criticised from the standpoint of the
Florentine _bottega_ and _piazza_. It is as though the _bourgeois_, not
content with having made nobility a crime, were bent upon extinguishing
its spirit. The tale of Agilulf vulgarizes the chivalrous conception of
love ennobling men of low estate, by showing how a groom, whose heart is
set upon a queen, avails himself of opportunity. Tancredi burlesques the
knightly reverence for a stainless scutcheon by the extravagance of his
revenge. The sanctity of the Thebaid, that ascetic dream of purity and
self-renunciation for God's service, is made ridiculous by Alibech. Ser
Ciappelletto brings contempt upon the canonization of saints. The
confessional, the worship of relics, the priesthood, and the monastic
orders are derided with the deadliest persiflage. Christ himself is
scoffed at in a jest which points the most indecent of these tales.[94]
Marriage affords a never-failing theme for scorn; and when, by way of
contrast, the novelist paints an ideal wife, he runs into such
hyperboles that the very patience of Griselda is a satire on its
dignity. Like Balzac, Boccaccio was unsuccessful in depicting virtuous
womanhood. Attempting this, he fell, like Balzac, into the absurdities
of sentiment. His own conception of love was sensual and voluptuous--not
uniformly coarse, nay often tender, but frankly carnal. Without having
recourse to the Decameron, this statement might be abundantly
substantiated by reference to the _Filostrato_, _Fiammetta_, _Amorosa
Visione_, _Ninfale Fiesolano_. Boccaccio enjoyed the painting of
licentious pleasure, snatched in secret, sometimes half by force, by a
lover after moderate resistance from his paramour. He imported into
these pictures the plebeian tone which we have already noticed in the
popular poetry of the preceding century, and which was destined to
pervade the erotic literature of the Renaissance. There is, therefore,
an ironical contrast between the decencies observed by his _brigata_ and
their conversation; a contrast rooted in the survival from chivalrous
times of conventional ideals, which have lost reality and been
persistently ignored in practice. This effect of irony is enhanced by
the fact that many of the motives are such as might have been
romantically treated, but here are handled from the _popolano grasso's_
point of view. A skeptical and sensuous imagination plays around the
sanctities and sublimities which have for it become illusory.
We observe the same kind of unconscious hypocrisy, the same spontaneous
sapping of now obsolete ideals, in the _Amorosa Visione_.[95] Here Love
is still regarded as the apotheosis of mortal experience. It is still
said to be the union of intelligence and moral energy in an enthusiasm
of the soul. Yet the joys of love revealed at the conclusion of the poem
are such as a _bayadere_ might offer.[96] The _bourgeois_ effaces the
knight; the Italian of the Renaissance has broken the leading strings of
mystical romance. This vision, composed in _terza rima_, was assuredly
not meant to travesty Dante. Still it would be difficult to imagine a
more complete inversion of the Dantesque point of view, a more
deliberate substitution of an Earthly Paradise for the Paradiso of the
Divine Comedy. It is as though Boccaccio, the representative of the new
age, in all the fullness of his sensuous _naivete_, appealed to the
poets of chivalry, and said: "See here how all your fancies find their
end in nature!"
It will not do to over-strain the censure implied in the foregoing
paragraphs. Natural appetite, no less than the ideal, has its elements
of poetry; and the sensuality of the Decameron accords with plastic
beauty in a work of art incomparably lucid. Shelley, no lenient critic,
wrote these words about the setting of the tales[97]: "What descriptions
of nature are those in his little introductions to every new day! It is
the morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it
obscure to us." Boccaccio's sense of beauty has already been alluded to;
and it so pervades his work that special attention need scarcely be
called to it. His prose abounds in passages which are perfect pictures
after their own kind, like the following, selected, not from the
Decameron, but from an earlier work, entitled _Filocopo_[98]:
Con gli orecchi intenti al suono, comincio ad andare in quella
parte ove il sentiva; e giunto presso alla fontana, vide le
due giovinette. Elle erano nel viso bianchissime, la quale
bianchezza quanto si conveniva di rosso colore era mescolata.
I loro occhi pareano mattutine stelle, e le picciole bocche di
colore di vermiglia rosa, piu piacevoli diveniano nel muoverle
alle note della loro canzone. I loro capelli come fila d'oro
erano biondissimi, i quali alquanto crespi s'avvolgevano infra
le verdi frondi delle loro ghirlande. Vestite per lo gran
caldo, come e detto sopra, le tenere e dilicate carni di
sottilissimi vestimenti, i quali dalla cintura in su
strettissimi mostravano la forma delle belle mamme, le quali
come due ritondi pomi pignevano in fuori il resistente
vestimento, e ancora in piu luoghi per leggiadre apriture si
manifestavano le candide carni. La loro statura era di
convenevole grandezza, in ciascun membro bene proporzionata.
Space and nineteenth-century canons of propriety prevent me from
completing the picture made by Florio and these maidens. It might be
paralleled with a hundred passages of like intention, where the Italian
artist is revealed to us by touches curiously multiplied.[99] We find in
them the sense of color, the scrupulous precision of form, and something
of that superfluous minuteness which belongs to painting rather than to
literature. The writer has seen a picture, and not felt a poem. In
rendering it by words, he trusted to the imagination of his reader for
suggesting a highly-finished work of plastic art to the mind.[100] The
_fetes champetres_ of the Venetian masters are here anticipated in the
prose of the _trecento_. Such descriptions were frequent in Italian
literature, especially frequent in the works of the best stylists,
Sannazzaro, Poliziano, Ariosto, the last of whom has been severely but
not unjustly criticised by Lessing for overstepping the limits of poetry
in his portrait of Alcina. It may be pleaded in defense of Boccaccio and
his followers that they belonged to a nation dedicated to the figurative
arts, and that they wrote for a public familiar with painted form. Their
detailed descriptions were at once translated into color by men
habituated to the sight of pictures. During the Renaissance, painting
dominated the Italian genius, and all the sister arts of expression felt
that influence, just as at Athens sculpture lent something even to the
drama.
As a poet, Boccaccio tried many styles. His epic, the _Teseide_, cannot
be reckoned a great success. He is not at home upon the battle-field,
and knew not how to sound the heroic trumpet.[101] Yet the credit of
discovery may be awarded to the author of this poem. He introduced to
the modern world a tale rich in romantic incidents and capable of still
higher treatment than he was himself able to give it. When we remember
how Chaucer, Shakspere, Fletcher and Dryden handled and rehandled the
episode of Palamon's rivalry with Arcite for the hand of Emilia, we dare
not withhold from Boccaccio the praise which belongs to creative
genius.[102] It is no slight achievement to have made a story which
bore such noble fruit in literature. The _Teseide_, moreover, fulfilled
an important mission in Italian poetry. It adapted the popular _ottava
rima_ to the style of the romantic epic, and fixed it for Pulci,
Poliziano, Boiardo, and Ariosto. That Boccaccio was not the inventor of
the stanza, as used to be assumed, may now be considered beyond all
question. That he had not learned to handle it with the majestic
sweetness of Poliziano, or the infinite variety of Ariosto, is evident.
Yet he deserves credit for having discerned its capacity and brought it
into cultivated use.
Though unequal in quality, his sonnets and _ballate_, whether separately
published or scattered through his numerous prose works, have a higher
merit. The best are those in which, following Guido Cavalcanti's path,
he gives free scope to his incomparable sense of natural beauty. The
style is steeped in sweetness, softness and the delicacy of music. From
these half-popular poems I might select the Ballata _Io mi son
giovinetta_; the song of the Angel from the planet Venus, extracted from
the _Filocopo_; a lament of a woman for her lost youth, _Il fior che 'l
valor perde_; and the girl's prayer to Love, _Tu se' nostro Signor caro
e verace_.[103] It is difficult for the critic to characterize poems so
true to simple nature, so spontaneously passionate, and yet so artful in
the turns of language, molded like wax beneath the poet's touch. Here
sensuousness has no vulgarity, and the seductions of the flesh are
sublimed by feeling to a beauty which is spiritual in refinement. It may
be observed that Boccaccio writes his best love-poetry to be sung by
girls. He has abandoned the standpoint of the chivalrous lover, though
he still uses the phraseology of the Italo-Provencal school. What
arrests his fancy is, not the ideal of womanhood raising man above
himself, but woman conscious of her own supreme attractiveness. He
delights in making her the mirror of the feelings she inspires. He bids
her celebrate in hymns the beauty of her sex, the perfume of the charms
that master man. When the metaphysical forms of speech, borrowed from
the elder style, are used, they give utterance to a passion which is
sensual, or blent at best with tenderness--a physical love-longing, a
sentiment born of youth and desire. A girl, for instance, speaks about
herself, and says:[104]
Colui che muove il cielo et ogni Stella
Mi fece a suo diletto
Vaga leggiadra graziosa e bella,
Per dar qua giu ad ogni alto intelletto
Alcun segno di quella
Bilta che sempre a lui sta nel cospetto.
On the lips of him who wrote the tale of Alibech, this language savors
of profanity. Yet we are forced to recognize the poet's sincerity of
feeling. It is the same problem as that which meets us in the _Amorosa
Visione_.[105] The god Boccaccio worshiped was changed: but this deity
was still divine, and deserved, he thought, the honors of mystic
adoration. At the same time there is nothing Asiatic in his sensuous
inspiration. The emotion is controlled and concentrated; the form is
pure in all its outlines.
The Decameron was the masterpiece of Boccaccio's maturity. But he did
not reach that height of excellence without numerous essays in styles of
much diversity. While still a young man, not long after his meeting with
Fiammetta, he began the _Filocopo_ and dedicated it to his new
love.[106] This romance was based upon the earlier tale of _Floire et
Blanceflor_.[107] But the youthful poet invested the simple love-story
of his Florio and Biancofiore with a masquerade costume of mythological
erudition and wordy rhetoric, which removed it from the middle ages. The
gods and goddesses of Olympus are introduced as living agents, supplying
the machinery of the romance until the very end, when the hero and
heroine are converted to Christianity, and abjure their old protectors
with cold equanimity. We are left to imagine that, for Boccaccio at any
rate, Venus, Mars and Cupid were as real as Christ and the saints,
though superseded as objects of pious veneration. This confusion of
Pagan and Christian mythology is increased by his habit of finding
classical periphrases for the expression of religious ideas. He calls
nuns _Sacerdotesse di Diana_. God the Father is _Quell'eccelso e
inestimabile principe Sommo Giove_. Satan becomes Pluto, and human sin
is Atropos. The Birth of Christ is described thus: _la terra come senti
il nuovo incarco della deita del figliuol di Giove_. The Apostles
appear as _nuovi cavalieri entrati contro a Plutone in campo_.[108] The
style of the _Filocopo_ was new; and in spite, or perhaps because of,
its euphuism, it had a decided success. This encouraged Boccaccio to
attempt the _Teseide_. The _Filostrato_ soon followed; and here for the
first time we find the future author of the Decameron. Under Greek names
and incidents borrowed from the War of Troy, we are in fact studying
some episode from the _chroniques galantes_ of the Neapolitan Court,
narrated with the vigor of a perfect master in the art of story telling.
Nothing could be further removed in sentiment from the heroism of the
Homeric age or closer to the customs of a corrupt Italian city than this
poem. In Troilo himself a feverish type of character, overmastered by
passion which is rather a delirium of the senses than a mood of feeling,
has been painted with a force that reminds us of the _Fiammetta_, where
the same disease of the soul is delineated in a woman. Pandaro shows for
the first time in modern literature an utterly depraved nature, reveling
in seduction, and glutting a licentious imagination with the spectacle
of satiated lust. The frenzied appetite of Troilo, Pandaro's ruffian
arts, and the gradual yieldings of Griselda to a voluptuous inclination,
reveal the master's hand; and though the poem is hurried toward the
close (Boccaccio being only interested in the portrayal of his hero's
love-languors, ecstasies and disappointment), the _Filostrato_ must
undoubtedly be reckoned the finest of his narratives in verse. The
second and third Cantos are remarkable for dramatic movement and wealth
of sensuous imagination, never rising to sublimity nor refined with such
poetry as Shakspere found for Romeo and Juliet, but welling copiously
from a genuinely ardent nature. The love described is nakedly and
unaffectedly luxurious; it is an overmastering impulse, crowned at last
with all the joys of sensual fruition. According to Boccaccio the repose
conferred by Love upon his votaries is the satiety of their
desires.[109] Between Dante's _Signore della nobilitade_ and his _Sir di
tutta pace_ there is indeed a wide gulf fixed.[110]
After the _Filostrato_, Boccaccio next produced the _Ameto_, _Amorosa
Visione_, _Fiammetta_, _Ninfale Fiesolano_, and _Corbaccio_, between the
years 1343 and 1355. The _Ameto_ is a tissue of pastoral tales,
descriptions, and versified interludes, prolix in style and affected
with pedantic erudition. To read it attentively is now almost
impossible, in spite of frequent passages where the luxuriant
word-painting of the author is conspicuous. In the _Amorosa Visione_ he
attempted the style which Petrarch had adopted for his _Trionfi_. After
reviewing human life under the several aspects of learning, glory, love,
fortune, the poet finally resigns himself to a Nirvana of sensual
beatitude. The poem is unsuccessful, because it adapts an obsolete form
of art to requirements beyond its scope. Boccaccio tries to pour the new
wine of the Renaissance into the old bottles of medieval allegory. In
the _Fiammetta_ Boccaccio exhibited all his strength as an anatomist of
feeling, describing the effects of passion in a woman's heart, and
analyzing its varying emotions with a subtlety which proved his
knowledge of a certain type of female character. It is the first attempt
in modern literature to portray subjective emotion exterior to the
writer. Since Virgil's Dido, or the _Heroidum Epistolae_ of Ovid, nothing
of the sort had been essayed upon an equal scale. Taken together with
Dante's _Vita Nuova_ and Petrarch's _Secretum_, each of which is a
personal confidence, the _Fiammetta_ may be reckoned among those
masterpieces of analytic art, which revealed the developed consciousness
of the Italian race, at a moment when the science of emotion was still
for the rest of Europe an undiscovered territory. This essay exercised a
wide and lasting influence over the descriptive literature of the
Renaissance. Yet when we compare its stationary monologues with the
brief but pregnant touches of the Decameron, we are forced to assign it
the rank of a study rather than a finished picture. The _Fiammetta_ is
to the Decameron what rhetoric is to the drama. This, however, is hardly
a deduction from its merit. The delineation of an unholy and unhappy
passion, blessed with fruition for one brief moment, cursed through
months of illness and despair with all the furies of vain desire and
poignant recollection, is executed with incomparable fullness of detail
and inexhaustible richness of fancy. The reader rises from a perusal of
the _Fiammetta_ with impressions similar to those which a work of
Richardson leaves upon the mind. At the same time it is full of poetry.
The Vision of Venus, the invocation to Sleep, and the description of
summer on the Bay of Baiae relieve a deliberate anatomy of passion, which
might otherwise be tedious.[111] The romance is so rich in material that
it furnished the motives for a score of tales, and the novelists of the
Renaissance availed themselves freely of its copious stores.[112]
The _Corbaccio_ or _Laberinto d'Amore_ is a satire upon women, animated
with the bitterest sense of injury and teeming with vindictive spite. It
was written with the avowed purpose of reviling a lady who had rejected
Boccaccio's advances, and it paints the whole sex in the darkest colors.
We could fancy that certain passages had been penned by a disappointed
monk. Though this work is in tone unworthy of its author, it bore fruits
in the literature of the next century. Alberti's satires are but
rhetorical amplifications of themes suggested by the _Corbaccio_. Nor is
it without value for the student of Italian manners. The list of
romances read by women in the fourteenth century throws light upon
Francesca's episode in Dante, and proves that the title _Principe
Galeotto_ was not given without precedent to Boccaccio's own
writings.[113] The discourse on gentle birth in the same treatise should
be studied in illustration of the Florentine conception of
nobility.[114] Boccaccio, though he follows so closely in time upon
Dante, already anticipates the democratic theories of Poggio.[115]
Feudal feeling was extinct in the _bourgeoisie_ of the great towns; nor
had the experience of the Neapolitan Court suppressed in Boccaccio's
mind the pride of a Florentine citizen. At the same time he felt that
contempt of the literary classes for the common folk which was destined
in the next century to divide the nation and to check the development of
its vulgar literature. He apologizes for explaining Dante, and for
bringing poetry down to the level of the _feccia plebeia_, the _vulgo
indegno_, the _ingrati meccanici_, and so forth.[116]
It remains to speak of yet another of Boccaccio's minor works, the
_Ninfale Fiesolano_. This is a tale in octave stanzas, which, under a
veil of mythological romance, relates the loves of a young man and a
nun, and their subsequent tragic ending. It owes its interest to the
vivid picture of seduction, so glowingly painted as to betray the
author's personal enjoyment of the motive. The story is thrown back into
a time antecedent to Christianity and civil life. The heroine, Mensola,
is a nymph of Diana; the hero, Affrico, a shepherd. The scene is laid
among the mountains above Florence; and when Mensola has been changed
into a fountain by the virgin goddess, whose rites she violated, the
poem concludes with a myth invented to explain the founding of Fiesole.
Civil society succeeds to the savagery of the woodland, and love is
treated as the vestibule to culture.[117] The romantic and legendary
portions of this tale are ill-connected. The versification is lax; and
except in the long episode of Mensola's seduction, which might have
formed a passage of contemporary novel-writing, the genius of Boccaccio
shines with clouded luster.[118] Yet the _Ninfale Fiesolano_ occupies a
not unimportant place in the history of Italian literature. It adapts
the pastoral form to that ideal of civility dependent upon culture,
which took so strong a hold upon the imagination of the _cinque cento_.
Its stanzas are a forecast of the _Arcadia_ and the _Orfeo_.
In the minor poems and romances, which have here been passed in review,
except perhaps in the _Fiammetta_, Boccaccio cannot be said to take a
place among European writers of the first rank. His style is prolix;
his versification, if we omit the _Canzoni a Ballo_ and some sonnets, is
slovenly; nor does he show exceptional ability in the conception and
conduct of his stories. He is strongest when he paints a violent passion
or describes voluptuous sensations, weakest when he attempts allegory or
assumes the airs of a philosopher. We feel, in reading these productions
of his earlier manhood, that nearly all were what the Germans call
_Gelegenheits-gedichte_. The private key is lost to some of these works,
which were intended for the ears of one among the multitude. On others
it is plainly written that they were the outpourings of a personal
desire, the self-indulgence of a fancy which reveled in imagined
sensuality, using literature as the safety-valve for subjective
longings. They lack the calm of perfect art, the full light falling on
the object from without, which marks a poem of the highest order. From
these romances of his youth, no less than from the Latin treatises of
his maturity, we return to the Decameron when we seek to place Boccaccio
among the classics. Nothing comparable with this Human Comedy for
universal interest had appeared in modern Europe, if we except the
Divine Comedy; and it may be questioned whether any work of equal scope
was given to the world before the theater of Shakspere and the comedies
of Moliere. Boccaccio, though he paints the surface of life, paints it
in a way to suggest the inner springs of character, and to bring the
motives of action vividly before us. _Quicquid agunt homines_ is the
matter of his book. The recoil from medieval principles of conduct,
which gives it a certain air of belonging to a moment rather than all
time, was necessary in the evolution of intellectual freedom. In this
respect, again, it faithfully reflected the Florentine temperament. At
no epoch have the Italians been sternly and austerely pious. Piety with
them is a passionate impulse rather than a deeply-reasoned habit based
upon conviction. Their true nature is critical, susceptible to beauty,
quick at seizing the ridiculous and exposing shams, suspicious of
mysticism, realistic, pleasure-loving, practical. These qualities,
special to the Florentines, but shared in large measure by the nation,
found artistic expression in the Decameron, and asserted their supremacy
in the literature of the Renaissance. That a sublime ideal,
unapprehended by Boccaccio, and destined to remain unrepresented in the
future, should have been conceived by Dante; that Petrarch should have
modulated by his masterpiece of poetic workmanship from the key of the
Divine Comedy to that of the Decameron; that one city should have
produced three such men, and that one half-century should have witnessed
their successive triumphs, forms the great glory of Florence, and is one
of the most notable facts in the history of genius.
It remains to speak about Boccaccio's prose, and the relation of his
style to that of other _trecentisti_. If we seek the origins of Italian
prose, we find them first in the Franco-Italian romances of the Lombard
period, which underwent the process of _toscaneggiamento_ at Florence,
next in books of morality and devotion, and also in the earlier
chronicles. Among the Tuscanized tales of chivalry belonging to the
first age of Italian literature are the _Conti di antichi cavalieri_
and the _Tavola Ritonda_, both of which bear traces of translation from
Provencal sources.[119] The _Novellino_, of which mention has already
been made, betrays the same origin. The style of these works offers a
pretty close parallel to the English of Sir Thomas Mallory. At the same
time that the literature of France was assuming an Italian garb, many
versions of Roman classics appeared. Orosius, Vegetius, Sallust, with
parts of Cicero, Livy and Boethius were adapted to popular reading. But
the taste of the time, as we have already seen in the preceding chapter,
inclined the authors of these works to make selections with a view to
moral edification. Their object was, not to present the ancients in a
modern garb, but to cull notable examples of conduct and ethical
sentences from the works that found most favor with the medieval
intellect. Passing under the general titles of _Fiori_, _Giardini_,
_Tesori_ and _Conviti_--_Fiori di filosofi e molto savi_, _Giardino di
Consolazione_, _Fiore di Rettorica_, _Fiore del parlar gentile_--these
collections supplied the laity with extracts from Latin authors, and
extended culture to the people. The _Libro di Cato_ might be chosen as a
fair example of their scope.[120] The number of such books, ascribed to
Bono Giamboni, Brunetto Latini, and Guidotto of Bologna, proves that an
extensive public was eager for instruction of this sort; and it is
reasonable to believe that they were studied by the artisans of central
Italy. The bass-reliefs and frescoes of incipient Italian art, the
pavement of the Sienese Cathedral, the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua,
bear traces of the percolation through all social strata of this
literature. A more important work of style was the _De Regimine
Principum_, of Egidio Colonna, translated from the French version by an
unknown Tuscan hand; while Giamboni's Florentine version of Latini's
_Tesoro_ introduced the erudition of the most learned grammarian of his
age to the Italians. Contemporaneously with this growth of vernacular
treatises on rhetorical and ethical subjects, we may assume that memoirs
and chronicles began to be written in the vulgar tongue. But so much
doubt has recently been thrown upon the earliest monuments of Italian
historiography that it must here suffice to indicate the change which
was undoubtedly taking place in this branch also of composition toward
the close of the thirteenth century.[121] Literature of all kinds
yielded to the first strong impact of the native idiom. Epistles, for
example, whether of private or of public import, were now occasionally
written in Italian, as can be proved by reference to the published
letters of Guittone d'Arezzo.[122]
The works hitherto mentioned belong to the latter half of the thirteenth
century. Their style, speaking generally, is dry and tentative. Except
in the versions of French romances, which borrow grace from their
originals, we do not find in them artistic charm of diction. The _Fiori_
and _Giardini_ are little better than commonplace books, in which the
author's personality is lost beneath a mass of extracts and citations.
The beginning of the fourteenth century witnessed the growth of a new
Italian prose. Of this second stage, the masterpieces are Villani's
Chronicle, Dante's _Vita Nuova_, the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, the
_Leggende dei Santi Padri_ of Domenico Cavalca, and Jacopo Passavanti's
_Specchio della vera Penitenza_.[123] These writers have no lack of
individuality. Their mind moves in their style, and gives a personal
complexion to their utterance. The chief charm of their manner, so far
as it is common to characters so diverse, is its grave and childlike
spontaneity. For vividness of description, for natural simplicity of
phrase, and for that amiable garrulity which rounds a picture by
innumerable details and unconscious touches of graphic force, not one of
the books of this period surpasses the _Fioretti_. Nor are the
_Leggende_ of Cavalca less admirable. Modern, especially Northern,
students may discover too much suavity and unction in the writer's
tone--a superfluity of sweetness which fatigues, a caressing tenderness
that clogs. After reading a few pages, we lay the book down, and wonder
whether it could really have been a grown man, and not a cherub flown
from Fra Angelico's Paradise, who composed it. This infantine note
belongs to the cloister and the pulpit. It matches the simple credulity
of the narrator, and well befits the miracles he loves to record. We
seem to hear a good old monk gossiping to a party of rosy-cheeked
novices, like those whom Sodoma painted in his frescoes of S. Benedict
at Monte Oliveto. It need hardly be observed that neither in Villani's
nor in Dante's prose do we find the same puerility. But all the
_trecentisti_ have a common character of limpidity, simplicity, and
unaffected grace.
The difficulties under which even the best Italian authors labor while
using their own language, incline them to an exaggerated admiration for
these pearls of the _trecento_. They look back with envy to an age when
men could write exactly as they thought and felt and spoke, without the
tyranny of the _Vocabolario_ or the fear of an Academy before their
eyes. We, with whom the literary has always closely followed the spoken
language, and who have, practically speaking, no dialects, while we
recognize the purity of that incomparably transparent manner, cannot
comprehend that it should be held up for imitation in the present age.
To paint like Giotto would be easier than to write like Passavanti. The
conditions of life and the modes of thought are so altered that the
style of the _trecento_ will not lend itself to modern requirements.
Among the prosaists of the fourteenth century--Cavalca, Villani, the
author of the _Fioretti_, and Passavanti--Boccaccio meets us with a
sudden surprise. They aimed at finding the readiest and most appropriate
words to convey their meaning in the simplest, most effective manner.
Without artistic purpose, without premeditation, without side-glances
at the classics, they wrote straightforward from their heart. There is
little composition or connection in their work, no molding of paragraphs
or rounding of phrases, no oratorical development, no gradation of tone.
Boccaccio, on the contrary, sought to give the fullness and sonority of
Latin to the periods of Italian prose. He had the Ciceronian cadence and
the labyrinthine sentences of Livy in view. By art of style he was bent
on rendering the vulgar language a fit vehicle for learning, rhetoric,
and history. In order to make it clear what sorts of changes he
introduced, it will be necessary to compare his prose with that of his
contemporaries. Dante used the following words to describe his first
meeting with Beatrice[124]:
Nove fiate gia, appresso al mio nascimento, era tornato lo
cielo della luce quasi ad un medesimo punto, quanto alla sua
propria girazione, quando alli miei occhi apparve prima la
gloriosa Donna della mia mente, la quale fu chiamata da molti
Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare. Ella era gia in
questa vita stata tanto che nel suo tempo lo cielo stellato
era mosso verso la parte d'oriente delle dodici parti l'una
d'un grado: si che quasi dal principio del suo anno nono
apparve a me, ed io la vidi quasi alla fine del mio nono anno.
Boccaccio, relating his first glimpse of Fiammetta on April 17, 1341,
spins the following cocoon of verbiage:[125]
Avvenne che un giorno, la cui prima ora Saturno avea
signoreggiata, essendo gia Febo co' suoi cavalli al sedecimo
grado del celestiale Montone pervenuto, e nel quale il
glorioso partimento del figliuiolo di Giove dagli spogliati
regni di Plutone si celebrava, io, della presente opera
componitore, mi trovai in un grazioso e bel tempio in
Partenope, nominato da colui che per deificarsi sostenne che
fosse fatto di lui sacrificio sopra la grata, e quivi con
canto pieno di dolce melodia ascoltava l'uficio che in tale
giorno si canta, celebrato da' sacerdoti successori di colui
che prima la corda cinse umilmente esaltando la povertade
quella seguendo.
Dante's style is analytic and direct. The sentences follow each other
naturally; and though the language is stiff, from scrupulous precision,
and in one place intentionally obscure, it is free from affectation.
Boccaccio aims at a synthetic presentation of all he means to say; and
he calls nothing by its right name, if he can devise a periphrasis. The
breathless period pants its labored clauses out, and dwindles to a lame
conclusion. The _Filocopo_ was, however, an immature production. In
order to do its author justice, and at the same time to compare his
style with a graceful piece of fourteenth-century composition, I will
select a passage from the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, and place it
beside one taken from the first novel of the Decameron. This is the
episode of S. Anthony preaching to the fishes[126]:
E detto ch'egli ebbe cosi, subitamente venne alla riva a lui
tanta moltitudine di pesci, grandi, piccoli e mezzani, che mai
in quel mare ne in quel fiume non ne fu veduta si grande
moltitudine: e tutti teneano i capi fuori dell'acqua, e tutti
stavano attenti verso la faccia di santo Antonio, e tutti in
grandissima pace e mansuetudine e ordine: imperocche dinanzi e
piu presso alla riva stavano i pesciolini minori, e dopo loro
stavano i pesci mezzani, poi di dietro, dov'era l'acqua piu
profonda, stavano i pesci maggiori. Essendo dunque in cotale
ordine e disposizione allogati i pesci, santo Antonio comincio
a predicare solennemente, e disse cosi: Fratelli miei pesci,
molto siete tenuti, secondo la vostra possibilitade, di
ringraziare il nostro Creatore, che v'ha dato cosi nobile
elemento per vostra abitazione; sicche, come vi piace, avete
l'acque dolci e salse; e havvi dati molti rifugii a schifare
le tempeste; havvi ancora dato elemento chiaro e transparente,
e cibo, per lo quale voi possiate vivere, etc., etc.... A
queste e simiglianti parole e ammaestramenti di santo Antonio,
cominciarono li pesci ad aprire la bocca, inchinaronli i capi,
e con questi ed altri segnali di riverenza, secondo li modi a
loro possibili, laudarono Iddio.
This is a portion of the character of Ser Ciapelletto:
Era questo Ciapelletto di questa vita. Egli essendo notajo,
avea grandissima vergogna quando uno de' suoi strumenti (come
che pochi ne facesse) fosse altro che falso trovato; de' quali
tanti avrebbe fatti, di quanti fosse stato richesto, e quelli
piu volentieri in dono, che alcun altro grandemente salariato.
Testimonianze false con sommo diletto diceva richesto e non
richesto; e dandosi a' que' tempi in Francia a' saramenti
grandissima fede, non curandosi fargli falsi, tante quistioni
malvagiamente vincea, a quante a giurare di dire il vero sopra
la sua fede era chiamato. Aveva oltre modo piacere, e forte vi
studiava, in commettere tra amici e parenti e qualunque altra
persona mali et inimicizie e scandali; de' quali quanto
maggiori mali vedeva seguire, tanto piu d'allegrezza prendea.
Invitato ad uno omicidio o a qualunque altra rea cosa, senza
negarlo mai, volenterosamente v'andava; e piu volte a fedire
et ad uccidere uomini colle proprie mani si trovo volentieri.
These examples will suffice to show how Boccaccio distinguished himself
from the _trecentisti_ in general. When his style attained perfection in
the Decameron, it had lost the pedantry of his first manner, and
combined the brevity of the best contemporary writers with rhetorical
smoothness and intricacy. The artful structure of the period, and the
cadences of what afterwards came to be known as "numerous prose," were
carried to perfection. Still, though he was the earliest writer of a
scientific style, Boccaccio failed to exercise a paramount influence
over the language until the age of the Academies.[127] The writers of
the fifteenth century, partly no doubt because these were chiefly men
of the people, appear to have developed their manner out of the material
of the _trecento_ in general, modified by contemporary usage. This is
manifest in the _Reali di Francia_, a work of considerable stylistic
power, which cannot probably be dated earlier than the middle of the
fifteenth century. The novelist Masuccio modeled his diction, so far as
he was able, on the type of the Decameron, and Alberti owed much to the
study of such works as the _Fiammetta_. Yet, speaking broadly, neither
the excellences nor the defects of Boccaccio found devoted imitators
until the epoch when the nation at large turned their attention to the
formation of a common Italian style. It was then, in the days of Bembo
and Sperone, that Boccaccio took rank with Petrarch as an infallible
authority on points of language. The homage rendered at that period to
the Decameron decided the destinies of Italian prose, and has since been
deplored by critics who believe Boccaccio to have established a false
standard of taste.[128] This is a question which must be left to the
Italians to decide. One thing, however, is clear; that a nation schooled
by humanistic studies of a Latin type, divided by their dialects, and
removed by the advance of culture beyond the influences of the purer
_trecentisti_, found in the rhetorical diction of the Decameron a common
model better suited to their taste and capacity than the simple style of
the Villani could have furnished.
Boccaccio died in 1375, seventeen months after the death at Arqua of his
master, Petrarch. The painter Andrea Orcagna died about the same period.
With these three great artists the genius of medieval Florence sank to
sleep. A temporary torpor fell upon the people, who during the next half
century produced nothing of marked originality in literature and art.
The Middle Age had passed away. The Renaissance was still in
preparation. When Boccaccio breathed his last, men felt that the elder
sources of inspiration had failed, and that no more could be expected
from the spirit of the previous centuries. Heaven and hell, the
sanctuaries of the soul, the garden of this earth, had been traversed.
The tentative essays and scattered preludings, the dreams and visions,
the preparatory efforts of all previous modern literatures, had been
completed, harmonized and presented to the world in the master-works of
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. What remained but to make a new start?
This step forward or aside was now to be taken in the Classical Revival.
Well might Sacchetti exclaim in that _canzone_[129] which is at once
Boccaccio's funeral dirge and also the farewell of Florence to the
fourteenth century:
Sonati sono i corni
D'ogni parte a ricolta;
La stagione e rivolta:
Se tornera non so, ma credo tardi.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] _Rime di Guido Cavalcanti, edite ed inedite_, etc., Firenze,
1813. See p. 29 for the Canzone, and p. 73 for a translation into
Italian of Dino's Latin commentary.
[63] _Op. cit._ pp. 21-27. Two in particular, _Era in pensier_ and
_Gli occhi di quella gentil forosetta_, may be singled out. A
_pastourelle_, _In un boschetto_, anticipates the manner of Sacchetti.
As for the May song, its opening lines, _Ben venga Maggio_, etc., are
referred by Carducci to Guido Cavalcanti.
[64] See _Vita e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoja_, Pisa, Capurro,
1813. Also Barbera's diamond edition of Cino da Pistoja and other
poets, edited by Carducci.
[65] The tomb of Cino in the Duomo at Pistoja, with its Gothic
canopies and the bass-reliefs which represent a Doctor of Laws
lecturing to men of all ranks and ages at their desks beneath his
professorial chair, is a fine contemporary monument. The great jurist
is here commemorated, not the master of Petrarch in the art of song.
[66] Cp. Dante _De Vulg. Eloq._ i. 17, upon Cino's purification of
Italian from vulgarisms, with Lorenzo de' Medici, who calls Cino
"tutto delicato e veramente amoroso, il quale primo, al mio parere,
comincio l'antico rozzore in tutto a schifare." _Lettera all'illustr.
Sig. Federigo_, Poesie (ed. Barbera, 1858), p. 33.
[67] _Il Canzoniere_ (Fraticelli's edition), p. 199.
[68] _Voi che portate_; _Donna pietosa_; _Deh peregrini_.
[69] See Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.
[70] Rossetti's translation of the _Vita Nuova_.
[71] _Donna del cielo_; _O benigna, o dolce_; _O bon Gesu_. See _Rime
di Fra Guittone d'Arezzo_ (Firenze, Morandi, 1828), vol. ii. pp. 212,
3; vol. i. p. 61.
[72] Not only the sixth _AEneid_, but the _Dream of Scipio_ also,
influenced the medieval imagination. The Biblical visions, whether
allegorical like those of Ezekiel and Paul, or apocalyptic, like S.
John's, exercised a similar control.
[73] See the little book of curious learning by Alessandro d'Ancona,
entitled _I Precursori di Dante_, Firenze, Sansoni, 1874.
[74] See De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i.
chap. 5. Of the _Commedia Spirituale dell'Anima_ I have seen a Sienese
copy of the date 1608, a reprint from some earlier Florentine edition.
The Comedy is introduced by two boys, good and bad. The piece itself
brings God as the Creator, the soul He has made, its guardian angel,
the devil, the powers of Memory, Reason, Will, and all the virtues in
succession, with corresponding vices, on the scene. It ends with the
soul's judgment after death and final marriage to Christ.
Dramatically, it is almost devoid of merit.
[75] See _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii.
[76] See above, _Revival of Learning_, chapter ii. I may also refer to
an article by me in the _Quarterly Review_ for October, 1878, from
which I shall have occasion to draw largely in the following pages.
[77] _Par._ xvi.
[78] Carducci, "Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale:" _Studi
Letterari_ (Livorno, 1874), p. 60.
[79] The _Divine Comedy_ was probably begun in earnest about 1303, and
the _Decameron_ was published in 1353.
[80] Boccaccio was called Giovanni della Tranquillita partly in scorn.
He resented it, as appears from a letter to Zanobi della Strada (_Op.
Volg._ vol. xvii. p. 101), because it implied a love of Court delights
and parasitical idleness. In that letter he amply defends himself from
such imputations, showing that he led the life of a poor and contented
student. Yet the nickname was true in a deeper sense, as is proved by
the very arguments of his apology, and confirmed by the description of
his life at Certaldo remote from civic duties (Letter to Pino de'
Rossi, _ibid._ p. 35), as well as by the tragi-comic narrative of his
discomfort at Naples (Letter to Messer Francesco, _ibid._ pp. 37-87).
Not only in these passages, but in all his works he paints himself a
comfort-loving _bourgeois_, whose heart was set on his books, whose
ideal of enjoyment was a satisfied passion of a sensual kind.
[81] See above, vol. ii. _Revival of Learning_, chap. ii. pp. 87-98.
[82] Boccaccio, _Opere Volgari_ (Firenze, 1833), vol. xv. p. 18.
[83] _Revival of Learning_, p. 88.
[84] I may specially refer to the passages of the _Amorosa Visione_
(cap. v. vi.) where he meets with Dante, "gloria delle muse mentre
visse," "il maestro dal qual'io tengo ogni ben," "il Signor d'ogni
savere;" also to the sonnets on Dante, and that most beautiful sonnet
addressed to Petrarch after death at peace in heaven with Cino and
Dante. See the _Rime_ (_Op. Volg._ vol. xvi.), sonnets 8, 60, 97, 108.
[85] De Sanctis, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i. cap. 9.
[86] "Che la ragion sommettono al talento:" _Inferno_ v. Compare these
phrases:
Le genti dolorose
Che hanno perduto il ben dell'intelletto.
--_Inferno_ iii.
And Semiramis:
Che libito fe lecito in sua legge.
--_Inferno_ v.
[87] In all his earlier works, especially in the _Fiammetta_, the
_Filostrato_, the _Ninfale Fiesolano_, the _Amorosa Visione_, he sings
the hymn of _Il Talento_, triumphant over medieval discipline. They
form the proper prelude to what is sometimes called the Paganism of
the Renaissance, but what is really a resurgence of the natural man.
It was this _talento_ which Valla philosophized, and Beccadelli and
Pontano sang.
[88] One instance will suffice to illustrate the different methods of
Boccaccio and Dante in dealing with the same material. We all know in
what murk and filth Dante beheld Ciacco, the glutton, and what
torments awaited Filippo Argenti, the _fiorentino spirito bizzarro_,
upon the marsh of Styx (_Inferno_ vi. and viii.). These persons play
the chief parts in Giorn. ix. nov. 8, of the _Decameron_. They are
still the spendthrift parasite, and the brutally capricious bully. But
while Dante points the sternest moral by their examples, Boccaccio
makes their vices serve his end of comic humor. The inexorableness of
Dante is nowhere more dreadful than in the eighth Canto of the
_Inferno_. The levity of Boccaccio is nowhere more superficial than in
that Novella.
[89] See the little work, full of critical learning, by Adolfo
Bartoli, _I Precursori del Boccaccio_, Firenze, Sansoni.
[90] See _Le Novelle Antiche_ (another name for _Il Novellino_), per
cura di Guido Biagi, Firenze, Sansoni, 1880. It is a curious
agglomeration of anecdotes drawn from the history of the Suabian
princes, Roman sources, the Arthurian legends, the Bible, Oriental
apologues, fables, and a few ancient myths. That of _Narcis_, p. 66,
is very prettily told. Only one tale is decidedly cynical. We find in
the book selections made from the _debris_ of a vast and various
medieval library. French influence is frequently perceptible in the
style.
[91] _Precursori del Boccaccio_, p. 57 to end.
[92] See _Carmina Burana_ (Stuttgart, 1847), pp. 1-112; _Poems of
Walter Mapes_, by Thomas Wright (for Camden Society, 1841), pp. 1-257,
for examples of these satiric poems. The _Propter Syon non tacebo_,
_Flete Sion filiae_, _Utar contra vitia_, should be specially noticed.
Many other curious satires, notably one against marriage and the
female sex, can also be found in Du Meril's three great collections,
_Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au douzieme Siecle_, _Poesies
Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, and _Poesies Inedites du Moyen Age_,
Paris, 1843-1847. Those to whom these works are not accessible, may
find an excellent selection of the serious and jocular popular Latin
medieval poetry in a little volume _Gaudeamus! Carmina Vagorum
selecta_, Lipsiae, Teubner, 1877. The question of their authorship has
been fairly well discussed by Hubatsch, _Die lateinischen
Vagantenlieder_, Goerlitz, 1870.
[93] The erotic and drinking songs of the Vagi deserve to be carefully
studied by all who wish to understand the germs of the Renaissance in
the middle ages. They express a simple naturalism, not of necessity
Pagan, though much is borrowed from the language of classical
mythology. I would call attention in particular to _AEstuans interius_,
_Omittamus studia_, _O admirabile Veneris idolum_, _Ludo cum Caecilia_,
_Si puer cum puellula_, and four _Pastoralia_, all of which may be
found in the little book _Gaudeamus_ cited above. In spontaneity and
truth of feeling they correspond to the Latin hymns. But their spirit
is the exact antithesis of that which produced the _Dies Irae_ and the
_Stabat Mater_. The absence of erudition and classical imitation
separates them from the poems of Beccadelli, Pontano, Poliziano, or
Bembo. They present the natural material of neo-pagan Latin verse
without its imitative form. It is youth rejoicing in its strength and
lustihood, enjoying the delights of spring, laughing at death, taking
the pleasures of the moment, deriding the _rumores senum severiorum_,
unmasking hypocrisy in high places, at wanton war with constituted
social shams. These songs were written by wandering students of all
nations, who traversed Germany, France, Italy, Spain, England, seeking
special knowledge at the great centers of learning, following
love-adventures, poor and careless, coldly greeted by the feudal
nobility and the clergy, attached to the people by their habits but
separated from them by their science. In point of faith these poets
are orthodox. There is no questioning of ecclesiastical dogma, no
anticipation of Luther, in their verses. This blending of theological
conformity with satire on the Church and moral laxity is eminently
characteristic of the Renaissance in Italy.
[94] See the last sentence of Giorn. iii. Nov. 1.
[95] _Op. Volg._ vol. xiv.
[96] Cap. xlix.
[97] Letter to Leigh Hunt, September 8, 1819.
[98] _Op. Volg._ vol. vii. p. 230. I am loth to attempt a translation
of this passage, which owes its charm to the melody and rhythm of
chosen words:--
"With ears intent upon the music, he began to go in the direction
whence he heard it; and when he drew nigh to the fountain, he beheld
the two maidens. They were of countenance exceeding white, and this
whiteness was blent in seemly wise with ruddy hues. Their eyes seemed
to be stars of morning, and their little mouths, of the color of a
vermeil rose, became of pleasanter aspect as they moved them to the
music of their song. Their tresses, like threads of gold, were very
fair, and slightly curled went wandering through the green leaves of
their garlands. By reason of the great heat their tender and delicate
limbs, as hath been saaid above, were clad in robes of the thinnest
texture, the which, made very tight above the waist, revealed the form
of their fair bosoms, which like two round apples pushed the opposing
raiment outward, and therewith in divers places the white flesh
appeared through graceful openings. Their stature was of fitting size,
and each limb well-proportioned."
[99] The description of the nymph Lia in the _Ameto_ (_Op. Volg._ xv.
30-33) carries Boccaccio's manner into tedious prolixity.
[100] Boccaccio was a great painter of female beauty and idyllic
landscape; but he had not the pictorial faculty in a wider sense. The
frescoes of the _Amorosa Visione_, when compared with Poliziano's
descriptions in _La Giostra_, are but meager notes of form. Possibly
the progress of the arts from Giotto to Benozzo Gozzoli and Botticelli
may explain this picturesque inferiority of the elder poet; but in
reading Boccaccio we feel that the defect lay not so much in his
artistic faculty as in the limitation of his sympathy to certain kinds
of beauty.
[101] Dante (_De Vulg. Eloq._ ii. 2) observed that while there were
three subjects of great poetry--War, Love, Morality--no modern had
chosen the first of these themes. Boccaccio in the last Canto of the
_Teseide_ seems to allude to this:
Poiche le muse nude cominciaro
Nel cospetto degli uomini ad andare,
Gia fur di quelli che le esercitaro
Con bello stile _in onesto parlare_,
Ed altri in _amoroso_ le operaro;
Ma tu, o libro, primo a lor cantare
_Di Marte_ fai gli affanni sostenuti,
_Nel volgar Lazio mai piu non veduti_.
[102] How far Boccaccio actually created the tale can be questioned.
In the dedication to Fiammetta (_Op. Volg._ ix. 3), he says he found a
very ancient version of his story, and translated it into rhyme and
the _latino volgare_ for the first time. Again, in the exordium to the
first Book (_ib._ p. 10), he calls it:
una storia antica
Tanto negli anni riposta e nascosa
Che latino autor non par ne dica
Per quel ch'i' senta in libro alcuna cosa.
We might perhaps conjecture that he had discovered the legend in a
Byzantine MS.
[103] Carducci, "Cantilene, etc.," _Op. cit._ pp. 168, 170, 171, 173.
[104] _Op. cit._ p. 160.
[105] See above, p. 114.
[106] This appears from the conclusion (_Op. Volg._ viii. 376).
Fiammetta was the natural daughter of Petrarch's friend and patron,
King Robert. Boccaccio first saw her in the church of S. Lawrence at
Naples, April 7, 1341.
[107] The history of this widely popular medieval romance has been
traced by Du Meril in his edition of the thirteenth-century French
version (Paris, 1856). He is of opinion that Boccaccio may have
derived it from some Byzantine source. But this seems hardly probable,
since Boccaccio gained his knowledge of Greek later in life. Certain
indications in the _Filocopo_ point to a Spanish original.
[108] See _Op. Volg._ vii. 6-11. Compare with these phrases those
selected from the humanistic writings of a later date, _Revival of
Learning_, p. 397.
[109] This is the climax (Parte Terza, stanza xxxii.):
A cui Troilo disse; anima mia,
I' te ne prego, si ch'io t'abbia in braccio
Ignuda si come il mio cor disia.
Ed ella allora: ve' che me ne spaccio;
E la camicia sua gittata via,
Nelle sue braccia si raccolse avvaccio;
E stringnendo l'un l'altro con fervore,
D'amor sentiron l'ultimo valore.
[110] The _Amorosa Visione_ ends with these words, _Sir di tutta
pace_; their meaning is explained in previous passages of the same
poem. At the end of cap. xlvi. the lady says:
Io volli ora al presente far quieto
Il tuo disio con amorosa pace,
Dandoti l'arra che finira il fleto.
Again in cap. l. we read:
E quel disio che or piu ti tormenta
Porro in pace, con quella bellezza
Che l'alma al cor tuttora ti presenta.
The context reveals the nature of the peace to be attained. It is the
satisfaction of an orgasm. We may compare the invocation to Venus and
her promise at the end of the _Caccia di Diana_, canto xvii. (_Op.
Volg._ xiv.). The time-honored language about "expelling all base
thoughts" is here combined with the anticipation of sensual
possession.
[111] _Op. Volg._ vi. 21, 89, 91.
[112] Bonucci in his edition of Alberti's works, conscious of that
author's debt to Boccaccio, advances the wild theory that he wrote the
_Fiammetta_. See _Opere Volgari di L.B. Alberti_, vol. iii. p. 353.
[113] _Laberinto d'Amore_ (Firenze, Caselli), p. 153, and p. 127.
[114] _Ibid._ p. 174.
[115] See _Age of the Despots_, p. 186, note.
[116] See Sonnets vii. and viii. of the _Rime_.
[117] The same motive occurs in the _Ameto_, where the power of love
to refine a rustic nature is treated both in the prose romance and in
the interpolated _terza rima_ poems. See especially the song of
Teogapen (_Op. Volg._ xv. 34).
[118] Boccaccio breaks the style and becomes obscenely vulgar at
times. See Parte Quarta, xxxvi. xxxvii., Parte Quinta, xlv. xlvi. The
innuendoes of the _Ugellino_ and the _Nicchio_ are here repeated in
figures which anticipate the novels and _capitoli_ of the _cinque
cento_.
[119] Students may consult the valuable work of Vincenzo Nannucci,
_Manuale della Letteratura del primo secolo della Lingua Italiana_,
Firenze, Barbera, 1874. The second volume contains copious specimens
of thirteenth-century prose.
[120] Nannucci, _op. cit._ vol. ii. p. 95.
[121] The journals of Matteo Spinelli, ascribed to an Apulian of the
thirteenth century, were long accepted as the earliest vernacular
attempt at history in prose. It has lately been suggested, with good
show of argument, that they are fabrications of the sixteenth century.
With regard to the similar doubts affecting the Malespini Chronicles
and Dino Compagni, I may refer to my discussion of this question in
the first volume of this work, _Age of the Despots_, pp. 251, 262-273.
[122] Nannucci, _op. cit._ p. 137.
[123] Of Villani's Chronicle I have already spoken sufficiently in the
_Age of the Despots_, chap. 5, and of the _Vita Nuova_ in this chapter
(above, pp. 67-70).
[124] _Vita Nuova_, cap. 2.
[125] _Filocopo_, _Op. Volg._ vii. 4.
[126] _Fioretti di S. Francesco_ (Venezia, 1853), p. 104.
[127] See below, the chapter on the Purists.
[128] See Capponi's _Storia della Repubblica di Firenze_, lib. iii.
cap. 9, for a very energetic statement of this view.
[129] See _Rime di M. Cino da Pistoja e d'altri del Secolo xiv._
(Firenze, Barbera, 1862), p. 528. It begins:
Ora e mancata ogni poesia
E vote son le case di Parnaso.
It contains the famous lines:
Come deggio sperar che surga Dante
Che gia chi il sappia legger non si trova?
E Giovanni che e morto ne fe scola.
Not less interesting is Sacchetti's funeral Ode for Petrarch (_ibid._
p. 517). Both show a keen sense of the situation with respect to the
decline of literature.