On Boccaccio's Decameron

I want to preface this essay by saying that I have no idea what I am talking about; at least I don’t have any formal education in the literary sciences outside of high school education and some autodidactic learning out of curiosity.

I have just finished Boccaccio’s Decameron, and I want to write a few thoughts and observations down. But first I want to mention why I even read this book.

Why did I read it?

For some reason, in my mind Voltaire’s Candide and Boccaccio’s Decameron live very close to each other. I think there must have been a film or another book that I’ve interacted with a long time ago in which they said Candide and Decameron right after each other, as I can clearly remember these two in this order being associated even though their time of origin is rather far apart, with Decameron being written somewhere in the mid-14th century and Candide in the Age of Enlightenment. But I will get back to what I feel like is actually very similar in these two books.

I started reading Decameron for two main reasons. First is because of the association I had with Candide, which I read a few months ago. And the second is the fact that in the book A vörös postakocsi by Krúdy Gyula, the protagonists spend quite some time drooling over Boccaccio’s more explicit poetry, which also piqued my interest, as I had then heard of Boccaccio and if a writer I like makes his protagonists fall in love with his poetry, I have to read some Boccaccio.

I will start by providing a short summary of the book.

The book is about ten young people going to the countryside near Firenze to escape (or at least be in a safer position) from the black death that is currently decimating through Italia. In the countryside, they stay at two beautiful villas where they have fun, play around, but most of all tell each other short stories for ten (fourteen) days. (They do not do this on fridays and saturday to keep the lord’s day holy.) They choose their King/Queen each day, who chooses the topic for their day’s short stories. So this book includes a frame story with the 10 youngsters, includes 100 short stories and an opening, an intermezzo and a closing thought from the author. These stories are erotic encounters, love stories, tragic tales, stories of mischief, comedies, tales of revenge, stories of grave suffering and everything in between.

What I expected and what I got?

I expected the whole book to be poetry for some reason rather than prose. I simply do not know why. Maybe because in the book I mentioned Boccaccio’s lyricism (however, after reading Decameron I am not sure if it is meant for the form of his writings or if it only refers to the contents) or maybe because I have read somewhere that this book was inspiration for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It does have at least one poem in the form of song lyrics every day; however, the whole book is prose, which I just want to put here in case anyone else was confused about the form of this book.

I honestly was not too sure what to expect content-wise from the book. I expected something romantic, maybe or something that is somewhat explicit based on the book I mentioned earlier. However, I was somewhat certain that it would feel dry and uninteresting to me as a modern reader, since then we have gotten a lot less prude and a lot more open with our feelings. At least this is what I initially thought.

The book is very explicit at some points. Of course, everything is very euphemistically put and beautifully abstracted away with metaphors; however, some novels are actually quite graphic (Just for example, the one where a friend ’takes’ his wife on top of the box that he has locked him into, after finding out the friend has been with his wife). This was also hugely surprising to me, as I did not expect it from a book from the 1300s.

I also thought that the book’s, and since the author explicitly writes in his name, the author’s views on the church and religion were going to be the same. As in, their views on the church as an institution would also stem from the unquestionable existence of a divine power; therefore, the church would also be an unquestionably holy institution. I also thought that since we are still like 200 years away from protestantism being a thing, there aren’t big criticisms of the church, at least not without fatal consequences. And certainly not something that can be a relevant piece of prose in that day and age. Turns out I was incredibly wrong. The book criticises every level of the institution, with not a single rank of holy man let off scot-free. From shavelings, through priests, clerics, parsons, bishops and even cloistresses, nuns, and other sisters. He blames them for living lavishly, for not being chaste - i.e. going out of their way to be the objects of infidelity and unfaithfulness - for being liars and for being skinflints towards the needy, and just for being generally bad people who are not the true servants of the divine.

I will also look into the fact, which I could not decipher why Boccaccio does, that he uses a lot of Greek words; however, he does use the Roman name of Amor (Cupid) instead of the Greek name Eros. Even the title is a derivation from Greek meaning ten-day. This strikes me as very peculiar (though it might not be), since Boccaccio himself stands on the land where all of the Roman culture was created, and he still chooses to turn to the Hellenic antiquity rather than his own ancestry.

Some of the short stories are incredibly forward-thinking in terms of literary tools and ideas. I remember there was a short story, I think maybe on day 5, which reminded me so much of Gogol’s novels. The story contained an episode where someone was so sad or embarrassed that they wanted to die. So they lay down, held their breath and died. Which felt incredibly realist to me.

It also has some stories which felt very magical realist to me, where a certain magical thing happened, usually in the form of a miracle, that was accepted as normal in the short story’s world.

On the topic of miracles. It was also incredibly interesting to me how the auther does not seem to believe in any big miracles that are connected to religion, which makes me think that he had a very mature image of God and how it could work in practice; even if his belief is unquestionable, this speaks volumes in the 1300s. I say this because in plenty of the stories, the story hinges upon some people making other people believe that a miracle happened by the power of God, when it was their own doing. Sometimes they do this to get revenge, sometimes to cover up a previous mess-up, and other times to be with the tricked person’s wife.

What I did not get?

I honestly think this book is absolutely amazing, and while you can’t really read it to children, it can make amazing bedtime stories to read every night. It did get a bit dense after around the 8th day for me, where I was struggling not to just skip the short stories to read the fluff of the frame story, as those were the people I truly cared about. However, I think this was the fault of circumstances, as I did need to go through the whole thing fairly fast to give the book(s) back to the library in time, so if someone paces themselves and reads only a few stories a day, in my opinion the book can easily stay very entertaining for its entire length.

On the topic of the frame story. At the beginning the author says that some of the men are in love or at least are excited about the some of the women in the group, and the author continues to elude to this fact in the frame story and at the end of day narrations however this goes nowhere, which I was slmewhat disappointed about, as I have gotten close to the characters and the book also tickled my who-dunnit solving brains trying to guess who would end up or start wooing which other character.

I was also surprised at how modern the moral of the book is. One must keep the fact that this was written 700 years ago in front of them, and then consider that out of the one hundred stories there was a single one where beating one’s wife who was not servile enough was made out to be a virtuous thing. However, rape was almost always framed in a clearly bad light. Violence is also either handled as a bad thing, at least out of proportion, except when it is used to give a payoff for a comedy. (Which I do not like; however, this also happens today: think someone says something very stupid and another character slaps them and then there is a pre-recorded laugh track playing in the background.) Cheating on one’s partner is often framed as a game between the man and the wife to see who can get away with more, and it is framed as something thrilling, rewarding or funny. Most importantly, it does not contain too much moral judgement, which I would a hundred per cent expect from a book written in the 14th century.

Candide and Decameron

In my opinion, whichever media bunched these two together in my head was very right, as the two are very similar. One explores the state of the world at their time, and the other does the same while also exploring a philosophy for life. Both do this through short stories (though Candide is continually about Candide (mostly) or sometimes the life stories of other characters and his thoughts, while Decameron is about unrelated people’s stories). Both are incredibly European, and both are very forward-thinking in their own moral frameworks and cultural ideas.

Read this book; it is great, and you will learn a lot from it!

Practical information

You can find the book here in English and in Italian; however, mind that I have read a Hungarian translation by Révay József, as I prefer to read in Hungarian if I cannot read the original material, as I find that it’s the most beautiful language to me.

So, then, be every lady at liberty to say and believe whatever she may think fit: but ’tis now time for me to bring these remarks to a close, with humble thanks to Him, by whose help and guidance I, after so long travail, have been brought to the desired goal. And may you, sweet my ladies, rest ever in His grace and peace; and be not unmindful of me, if, peradventure, any of you may, in any measure, have been profited by reading these stories.