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TITLE: LA FIAMMETTA
AUTHOR: GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO
EBOOK: E00072 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

LA FIAMMETTA 
 
BY 
 
GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO 
 
TRANSLATED BY JAMES C. BROGAN 
 
1907. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
Youth, beauty, and love, wit, gayety and laughter, are the component 
parts of the delightful picture conjured up by the mere name of Giovanni 
Boccaccio, the prince of story-tellers for all generations of men. This 
creator of a real literary epoch was born in Paris, in 1313, (in the 
eleventh year of Dante's exile), of an Italian father and a French-woman 
of good family. His father was a merchant of Florence, whither he 
returned with his son when the child was seven years old. The boy 
received some education, but was placed in a counting-house when he was 
only thirteen, and at seventeen he was sent by his father to Naples to 
enter another commercial establishment. But he disliked commerce, and 
finally persuaded his father to allow him to study law for two years at 
the University of Naples, during which period the lively and attractive 
youth made brisk use of his leisure time in that gay and romantic city, 
where he made his way into the highest circles of society, and 
unconsciously gleaned the material for the rich harvest of song and 
story that came with his later years. At this time he was present at the 
coronation of the poet Petrarch in the Capitol, and was fired with 
admiration for the second greatest poet of that day. He chose Petrarch 
for his model and guide, and in riper manhood became his most intimate 
friend. 
 
By the time he was twenty-five, Boccaccio had fallen in love with the 
Lady Maria, a natural daughter of King Robert of Naples, who had caused 
her to be adopted as a member of the family of the Count d'Aquino, and 
to be married when very young to a Neapolitan nobleman. Boccaccio first 
saw her in the Church of San Lorenzo on the morning of Easter eve, in 
1338, and their ensuing friendship was no secret to their world. For the 
entertainment of this youthful beauty he wrote his _Filicopo_, and the 
fair Maria is undoubtedly the heroine of several of his stories and 
poems. His father insisted upon his return to Florence in 1340, and 
after he had settled in that city he occupied himself seriously with 
literary work, producing, between the years 1343 and 1355, the _Teseide_ 
(familiar to English readers as "The Knight's Tale" in Chaucer, 
modernized by Dryden as "Palamon and Arcite"), _Ameto, Amorosa Visione, 
La Fiammetta, Ninfale Fiesolona_, and his most famous work, the 
_Decameron_, a collection of stories written, it is said, to amuse Queen 
Joanna of Naples and her court, during the period when one of the 
world's greatest plagues swept over Europe in 1348. In these years he 
rose from the vivid but confused and exaggerated manner of _Filocopo_ to 
the perfection of polished literary style. The _Decameron_ fully 
revealed his genius, his ability to weave the tales of all lands and all 
ages into one harmonious whole; from the confused mass of legends of the 
Middle Ages, he evolved a world of human interest and dazzling beauty, 
fixed the kaleidoscopic picture of Italian society, and set it in the 
richest frame of romance. 
 
While he had the _Decameron_ still in hand, he paused in that great 
work, with heart full of passionate longing for the lady of his love, 
far away in Naples, to pour out his very soul in _La Fiammetta_, the 
name by which he always called the Lady Maria. Of the real character of 
this lady, so famous in literature, and her true relations with 
Boccaccio, little that is certain is known. In several of his poems and 
in the _Decameron_ he alludes to her as being cold as a marble statue, 
which no fire can ever warm; and there is no proof, notwithstanding the 
ardor of Fiammetta as portrayed by her lover--who no doubt wished her to 
become the reality of his glowing picture--that he ever really received 
from the charmer whose name was always on his lips anything more than 
the friendship that was apparent to all the world. But she certainly 
inspired him in the writing of his best works. 
 
The best critics agree in pronouncing _La Fiammetta_ a marvelous 
performance. John Addington Symonds says: "It is the first attempt in 
any literature to portray subjective emotion exterior to the writer; 
since the days of Virgil and Ovid, nothing had been essayed in this 
region of mental analysis. The author of this extraordinary work proved 
himself a profound anatomist of feeling by the subtlety with which he 
dissected a woman's heart." The story is full of exquisite passages, and 
it exercised a widespread and lasting influence over all the narrative 
literature that followed it. It is so rich in material that it furnished 
the motives of many tales, and the novelists of the sixteenth century 
availed themselves freely of its suggestions. 
 
After Boccaccio had taken up a permanent residence in Florence, he 
showed a lively interest in her political affairs, and fulfilled all 
the duties of a good citizen. In 1350 he was chosen to visit the lords 
of various towns of Romagna, in order to engage their cooperation in a 
league against the Visconti family, who, already lords of the great and 
powerful city of Milan, desired to extend their domains beyond the 
Apennines. In 1351 Boccaccio had the pleasure of bearing to the poet 
Petrarch the news of the restoration of his rights of citizenship and of 
his patrimony, both of which he had lost in the troubles of 1323, and 
during this visit the two geniuses became friends for life. They delved 
together into the literature of the ancients, and Boccaccio determined, 
through the medium of translation, to make the work of the great Greek 
writers a part of the liberal education of his countrymen. A knowledge 
of Greek at that time was an exceedingly rare accomplishment, since the 
serious study of living literatures was only just beginning, and the 
Greek of Homer had been almost forgotten. Even Petrarch, whose erudition 
was marvelous, could not read a copy of the _Iliad_ that he possessed. 
Boccaccio asked permission of the Florentine Government to establish a 
Greek professorship in the University of Florence, and persuaded a 
learned Calabrian, Leonzio Pilato, who had a perfect knowledge of 
ancient Greek, to leave Venice and accept the professorship at Florence, 
and lodged him in his own house. Together the Calabrian and the author 
of _La Fiammetta_ and the _Decameron_ made a Latin translation of the 
_Iliad_, which Boccaccio transcribed with his own hand. But his literary 
enthusiasm was not confined to his own work and that of the ancients. 
His soul was filled with a generous ardor of admiration for Dante; 
through his efforts the Florentines were awakened to a true sense of the 
merits of the sublime poet, so long exiled from his native city, and the 
younger genius succeeded in persuading them to establish a professorship 
in the University for the sole study of the _Divine Comedy_, he himself 
being the first to occupy the chair, and writing a _Life of Dante_, 
besides commentaries on the _Comedy_ itself. 
 
Mainly through his intimacy with the spiritual mind of Petrarch, 
Boccaccio's moral character gradually underwent a change from the 
reckless freedom and unbridled love of pleasure into which he had easily 
fallen among his associates in the court life at Naples. He admired the 
delicacy and high standard of honor of his friend, and became awakened 
to a sense of man's duty to the world and to himself. During the decade 
following the year 1365 he occupied himself at his home in Certaldo, 
near Florence, with various literary labors, often entertaining there 
the great men of the world. 
 
Petrarch's death occurred in 1374, and Boccaccio survived him but one 
year, dying on the twenty-first of December, 1375. He was buried in 
Certaldo, in the Church of San Michele e Giacomo. 
 
That one city should have produced three such men as the great 
triumvirate of the fourteenth century--Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--and 
that one half-century should have witnessed their successive triumphs, 
is the greatest glory of Florence, and is one of the most notable facts 
in the history of genius. 
 
We quote once more from Symonds: "Dante brought the universe into his 
_Divine Comedy_. 'But the soul of man, too, is a universe', and of this 
inner microcosm Petrarch was the poet and genius. It remained for 
Boccaccio to treat of daily life with an art as distinct and dazzling as 
theirs. From Dante's Beatrice, through Petrarch's Laura, to Boccaccio's 
La Fiammetta--from woman as an allegory of the noblest thoughts and 
purest stirrings of the soul, through woman as the symbol of all beauty 
worshiped at a distance, to woman as man's lover, kindling and 
reciprocating the most ardent passion; from mystic, stately periods to 
Protean prose; from verse built up into cathedral-like dignity, through 
lyrics light as arabesques and pointed with the steely touch of polished 
style, to that free form of speech which takes all moods and lends 
itself alike to low or lofty things--such was the rapid movement of 
Italian genius within the brief space of fifty years. So quickly did the 
Renaissance emerge from the Middle Ages; and when the voices of that 
august trio were silenced in the grave, their echoes ever widened and 
grew louder through the spacious time to come." 
 
No translation into English of _La Fiammetta_ has been made since 
Shakespeare's time--when a small edition was published, which is now so 
rare as to be practically unattainable--until the appearance of the 
present Scholarly and poetic rendering, which places within the reach of 
all one of the world's greatest masterpieces of literature. 
 
D.K.R. 
 
PROLOGUE 
 
_Beginneth the Book called Elegy of Madonna Fiammetta, sent by her to 
Ladies in Love._ 
 
When the wretched perceive or feel that their woes arouse compassion, 
their longing to give vent to their anguish is thereby increased. And 
so, since, from long usance, the cause of my anguish, instead of growing 
less, has become greater, the wish has come to me, noble ladies--in 
whose hearts, mayhap, abides a love more fortunate than mine--to win 
your pity, if I may, by telling the tale of my sorrows. Nor is it at all 
my intent that these my words should come to the ears of men. Nay, 
rather would I, so far as lies in my power, withhold my complaints from 
them; for, such bitterness has the discovery of the unkindness of one 
man stirred in me, that, imagining all other men to be like him, 
methinks I should be a witness of their mocking laughter rather than of 
their pitying tears. You alone do I entreat to peruse my story, knowing 
full well that you will feel with me, and that you have a pious concern 
for others' pangs. Here you will not find Grecian fables adorned with 
many lies, nor Trojan battles, foul with blood and gore, but amorous 
sentiments fed with torturing desires. Here will appear before your very 
eyes the dolorous tears, the impetuous sighs, the heart-breaking words, 
the stormy thoughts, which have harrowed me with an ever-recurring goad, 
and have torn away from me sleep and appetite and the pleasant times of 
old, and my much-loved beauty. When you behold these things, and behold 
them with the ardent feelings which ladies are wont to have, sure I am 
that the cheeks of each separately, and of all when brought together, 
will be bathed in tears, because of those ills which are alone the 
occasion of my never-ending misery. Do not, I beseech you, refuse me 
these tears, reflecting that your estate is unstable as well as mine, 
and that, should it ever come to resemble mine (the which may God 
forfend!), the tears that others shed for you will be pleasing to you in 
return. And that the time may pass more rapidly in speaking than in, 
weeping, I will do my best to fulfil my promise briefly, beginning with 

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