Mimesis (40 page)

The social prerequisites for the establishment of an intermediate
style in the antique sense were fulfilled in Italy from the first half of the fourteenth century. In the towns an elevated stratum of patrician burghers had come to the fore; their mores, it is true, were still in many respects linked to the forms and ideas of the feudal courtly culture, but, as a result of the entirely different social structure, as well as under the influence of early humanist trends, they soon received a new stamp, becoming less bound up with class, and more strongly personal and realistic. Inner and outer perception broadened, threw off the fetters of class restriction, even invaded the realm of learning, thitherto the prerogative of clerical specialists, and gradually gave it the pleasant and winning form of personal culture in the service of social intercourse. The language, so recently a clumsy and inelastic tool, became supple, rich, nuanced, flourishing, and showed that it could accommodate itself to the requirements of a discriminating social life of refined sensuality. The literature of society acquired what it had not previously possessed: a world of reality and of the present. Now there is no doubt that this gain is strictly connected with the much more important gain on a higher stylistic level, Dante’s conquest of a world, made a generation before. This connection we shall now attempt to analyze, and for that purpose we return to our text.

Its most conspicuous distinguishing characteristics, if we compare it with earlier narratives, are the assurance with which, in both perception and syntactical structure, it handles complex factual data, and the subtle skill with which it adapts the narrative tempo and level of tone to the inner and outer movement of the narrated events. This we have tried to show in detail above. The conversation between the two women, the spreading of the rumor through the town, and the dramatic night scene at Lisetta’s house are made a clearly surveyable, coherent whole within which each part has its own independent, rich, and free motion. That Dante possesses the same ability to command a real situation of any number of constituent parts and varied nuances, that he possesses it to a degree which no other medieval author known to us can even distantly approach, I tried to show in the preceding chapter, using as my example the occurrences at the beginning of the tenth canto of the
Inferno
. The coherence of the whole, the shift in tone and rhythmic pulse between let us say the introductory conversation and the appearance of Farinata, or upon Cavalcante’s sudden emergence and in his speeches, the sovereign mastery of the syntactic devices of language, I there analyzed as carefully as I know how. Dante’s command over phenomena impresses us as much less adaptable
but also as much more significant than the corresponding ability in Boccaccio. In itself the heavy beat of the tercets, with their rigid rhyme pattern, does not permit him as free and light a movement as Boccaccio allowed himself, but he would have scorned it in any case. Yet there is no mistaking the fact that Dante’s work was the first to lay open the panorama of the common and multiplex world of human reality. Here, for the first time since classical antiquity, that world can be seen freely and from all sides, without class restriction, without limitation of the field of vision, in a view which may turn everywhere without obstruction, in a spirit which places all phenomena in a living order, and in a language which does justice both to the sensory aspect of phenomena and to their multiple and ordered interpenetration. Without the
Commedia
the
Decameron
could not have been written. No one will deny this, and it is also clear that Dante’s rich world is transposed to a lower level of style in Boccaccio. This latter point is particularly striking if we compare two similar movements—for example, Lisetta’s sentence,
Comare, egli non si vuol dire, ma l’intendimento mio è l’agnolo Gabriello
, in our text, and
Inferno
18, 52, where Venedico Caccianimico says,
Mal volontier lo dico; / ma sforzami la tua chiara favella, / Che mi fa sovvenir del mondo antico
. It is of course not his gift of observation and his power of expression for which Boccaccio is indebted to Dante. These qualities he had by nature and they are very different from the corresponding qualities in Dante. Boccaccio’s interest is centered on phenomena and emotions which Dante would not have deigned to touch. What he owes to Dante is the possibility of making such free use of his talent, of attaining the vantage point from which it is possible to survey the entire present world of phenomena, to grasp it in all its multiplicity, and to reproduce it in a pliable and expressive language. Dante’s power, which could do justice to all the various human presences in his work, Farinata and Brunetto, Pia de’ Tolomei and Sordello, Francis of Assisi and Cacciaguida, which could make them arise out of their own specific conditions and speak their own language—that power made it possible for Boccaccio to achieve the same results for Andreuccio and Frate Cipolla or his servant, for Ciappelletto and the baker Cisti, for Madonna Lisetta and Griselda. With this power of viewing the world synthetically there also goes a critical sense, firm yet elastic in perspective, which, without abstract moralizing, allots phenomena their specific, carefully nuanced moral value—a critical sense which, indeed, causes the moral value to shine out of the phenomena themselves.
In our story, after the relatives reach home
con gli arnesi del agnolo
, Boccaccio continues as follows:
In questo mezzo, fattosi il dì chiaro, essendo il buono uomo in sul Rialto, udì dire come l’agnolo Gabriello era la notte andato a giacere con Madonna Lisetta, e da cognati trovatovi, s’era per paura gittato nel canale, nè si sapeva che divenuto se ne fosse
.

(Broad day come, the good man with whom Fra Alberto had taken refuge, being on the Rialto, heard how the angel Gabriel had gone that night to lie with Madam Lisetta and being surprised by her kinsmen, had cast himself for fear into the canal, nor was it known what was come of him.) Trans. John Payne.

The tone of seeming seriousness, which never mentions the fact that the Venetians on the Rialto are bursting with laughter, insinuates, without a word of moral, aesthetic, or any other kind of criticism, exactly how the occurrence is to be evaluated and what mood the Venetians are in. If instead Boccaccio had said that Frate Alberto’s behavior was underhanded and Madonna Lisetta stupid and gullible, that the whole thing was ludicrous and absurd, and that the Venetians on the Rialto were greatly amused by it, this procedure would not only have been much clumsier but the moral atmosphere, which cannot be exhausted by any number of adjectives, would not have come out with anything like the force it now has. The stylistic device which Boccaccio employs was highly esteemed by the ancients, who called it “irony.” Such a mediate and indirectly insinuating form of discourse presupposes a complex and multiple system of possible evaluations, as well as a sense of perspective which, together with the occurrence, suggests its effect. In comparison, Salimbene strikes us as decidedly naive when, in the anecdote quoted above, he inserts the sentence,
videntes hoc Florentini, qui trufatores maximi sunt, ridere ceperunt
. The note of malicious irony in our present passage from Boccaccio is his own. It does not occur in the
Commedia
. Dante is not malicious. But the breadth of view, the incisive rendering of a clearly defined, complex evaluation by means of indirect suggestion, the sense of perspective in binding up event with effect, are Dante’s creation. He does not tell us who Cavalcante is, what he feels, and how his reactions are to be judged. He makes him appear and speak, and merely adds:
le sue parole e il modo de la pena m’avean di costui già letto il nome
. Long before we are given any details, Dante fixes the moral tone of the Brunetto episode (
Inf
., 15):

(Thus eyed by that family, I was recognized by one who took me by the skirt, and said: “What a wonder!” And I, when he stretched out his arm to me, fixed my eyes on his baked aspect, so that the scorching of his visage hindered not my mind from knowing him; and bending my face to his, I answered: “Are you here, Ser Brunetto?” And he: “O my son! …”) Trans. Dr. J. A. Carlyle, “Temple Classics.”

Without a single word of explanation he gives us the whole Pia de’ Tolomei in her own words (
Purg
., 5; see above, p. 201):

(“Pray, when thou shalt return to the world, and art rested from thy long journey,” followed the third spirit after the second, “remember me, who am La Pia. …”)

And from among the abundance of instances in which Dante illustrates the effects of phenomena, or even phenomena through their effects, I choose the famous simile of sheep coming out of the pen, by which he describes the slow dispelling of the amazement which fell upon the crowd in the Antipurgatorio at the sight of Virgil and Dante (
Purg
., 3). Compared with such methods of characterization, which operate with the most exact perception of what is individual and the most varied and subtle means of expression, everything earlier seems narrow and crude and without any real order as soon as it attempts to come close to phenomena. Take for instance the lines in which the author of the previously quoted fablel describes his priest’s old mother:

(He had an old mother who was a horrible creature and very avaricious. Hunch-backed she was, and black and hideous and opposed to everything that was good. Everybody loathed her. Even the priest, because of her unreasonableness, would under no conditions let her come into his house. She was too much of a gossip and too disgusting. …)

This is by no means devoid of graphic elements, and the transition from a general characterization to effect upon the surroundings, and then the
meisme-
climax giving the son’s attitude, represents a natural and vivid continuity. But everything is stated in the coarsest and crudest manner possible; there is no personal and no precise perception. The adjectives, on which, after all, the principal work of characterization must fall, seem to be sprinkled into the lines at random, as syllable count and rhyme happened to permit, in a hotchpotch of moral and physical characteristics. And of course the entire characterization is direct. To be sure, Dante by no means scorns direct characterization through adjectives, at times through adjectives of the widest content. But then the effect is something like this:

(My sister, who, whether she were more fair or more good I know not. …)

Nor does Boccaccio scorn the direct method of characterization. At the very beginning of our text we find two popular phrases which serve to set forth Lisetta’s stupidity directly and graphically:
che poco sale avea in zucca
and
che piccola levatura avea
. Reading the beginning of the novella, we find a whole collection of things similar in form and intent:
una giovane donna bamba e sciocca; sentiva dello scemo; donna mestola; donna zucca al vento, la quale era anzi che no un poco
dolce di sale; madonna baderla; donna poco fila
. This little collection looks like a merry game Boccaccio is playing with his knowledge of amusing colloquial phrases and perhaps it also serves to describe the vivacious mood of the teller of the tale, Pampinea, whose purpose it is to divert the company, who have just been touched to tears by the preceding story. In any case, Boccaccio is very fond of this sort of play with a variety of phrases drawn from the vigorous and imaginative language of the common people. Consider for instance the way in which (in novella 10 of the sixth day) Frate Cipolla’s servant, Guccio, is characterized, partly directly and partly by his master. It is a striking example of Boccaccio’s characteristic mixture of popular elements and subtle malice, ending in one of the most beautifully extended periods that he ever wrote (
ma Guccio Imbratta il quale era
, etc.). In it the stylistic level shifts from a most enchanting lyrical movement (
più vago di stare in cucina che sopra i verdi rami l’usignolo
) through the coarsest realism (
grassa e grossa e piccola e mal fatta e con un paio di poppe che parevan due ceston da letame
, etc.) to something approaching horror (
non altramenti che si gitta l’avoltoio alla carogna
), yet all the parts form a whole by virtue of the author’s malice, which glints through everywhere.

Without Dante such a wealth of nuances and perspectives would hardly have been possible. But of the figural-Christian conception which pervaded Dante’s imitation of the earthly and human world and which gave it power and depth, no trace is to be found in Boccaccio’s book. Boccaccio’s characters live on earth and only on earth. He sees the abundance of phenomena directly as a rich world of earthly forms. He was justified in so doing, because he had not set out to compose a great, weighty, and sublime work. He has much better reason than Dante to call the style of his book
umilissimo e rimesso
(introduction to the fourth day), for he really writes for the entertainment of the unlearned, for the consolation and amusement of the
nobilissime donne
, who do not go to study at Rome or Athens or Bologna. With much wit and grace he defends himself in his conclusion against those who claim that it is unseemly for a weighty and serious man (
ad un uom pesato e grave
) to write a book with so many jests and fooleries: