'In the face of its onrush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing'

Boccaccio |The Decameron

Well, this post would serve a sequel to our last post on Camus!

However, here, it’s Milton’s delightful quote that steals the thunder! ;-)

Waxing with such eloquence on the power contained within a book, Milton, John Milton says that, ‘A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life’.

This sagely saying augurs well, for each of those lovely-o-lovely books of ages past, written down by good ol’ sages past for a life beyond life; books that carry on them all along, the burden of the author’s culture, the impact of the author’s milieu, and the aura of the author’s personality stamped on them!

In our last past post then, we had discussed Albert Camus’ The Plague and the conflicting dualities present in the thought processes of the main characters.

Our next good book that’s in store for today’s post also evidences such ‘conflicting dualities’, and it is titled, The Decameron written by Boccaccio, way back in the year 1353.

The Decameron, has always been extolled, venerated and celebrated as the ultimate paradigm of Italian classical prose, and has proved immensely impactful and influential on all of Renaissance literature.

The backdrop to the Decameron is yet again - a plague!

In fact Boccaccio is said to have lived through this plague, and hence has had a first-hand, eye-witness account of the great plague that swept across and ravaged all of Florence in the fourteenth century. It would also be meet here to bear in mind that by approximate estimates, historians have attested to the deaths of two thirds to three fourths of the city’s 100,000 strong populace in Florence, as a result of this devastating plague!

The Decameron hence starts its narration with the fleeing of seven women and three men, who – after having thus fled Florence because of the plague – are now closeted and sheltered in a deserted yet sylvan, fertile country villa, outside of the city of Florence for a period of fourteen days! [Hope the number ‘fourteen’ in the context of the Corona virus, rings a bell on you!!!]

They now decide amongst themselves on ways to spend their days, their fourteen days in isolation, and hence resolve to host a number of events to keep them occupied all of these fourteen days.

As such, they decide to have alternate story-telling sessions, wherein stories are to be narrated by each of them in turns, over a course of ten days – hence Decameron – or Ten Day’s Work!  

The remaining four days were set aside for religious purposes like prayers and devotions! As such, in toto, there were a hundred stories in all!

The Decameron has often been nicknamed, The Human Comedy. And much akin to Dante’s long narrative poem titled, Divine Comedy, [written by his own Florentine contemporary,] The Decameron also shows utmost respect to the age-old parameters of a comedy which advocates ‘foul and horrible at the beginning, in the end felicitous, desirable and pleasing!’

On a similar strand starts then, The Decameron!

Kinda foul and horrible at the beginning, as it describes the plague in such horrific detail. But again, the gentleman in Boccaccio so gently persuades his reader to withstand the horrific descriptions that don the beginning, as they would soon proceed to more pleasing and more entertaining descriptions too, quite too soon, during the course of the pages – like hikers who are confronted by a steep and rugged hill are led from thence on, and look beyond – to see a fair and beautiful plain ahead of them!

In like fashion, then, the book begins with tales of vice at the very beginning, and ends with tales of virtues towards the very end, forming thus, a perfect comedic closure of sorts!

Like Camus, Boccaccio too, in the course of his descriptive takes on the pestilence, takes an intense dig on the decay and the disintegration of revered traditions and respected social institutions, which according to him were literally ‘powerless’ in the face of such a disastrous natural calamity as this!

Here’s bringing you the First Day’s Proceedings from Boccaccio’s The Decameron, to help us appreciate the book in all its grandeur, all by ourselves, on how this 14th century book proves so universal in its appeal, and so relevant to our present times, especially in connect with the Corona pandemic that’s been raging across nations these days.

So here goes excerpts, and just excerpts, from Boccaccio’s opening pages to The Decameron for us all…

FIRST DAY

Some say that the plague descended upon the human race through the influence of the heavenly bodies, others that it was a punishment signifying God’s righteous anger at our iniquitous way of life.

But whatever its cause, it had originated some years earlier in the East, where it had claimed countless lives before it unhappily spread westward, growing in strength as it swept relentlessly on from one place to the next.

In the face of its onrush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing.

Large quantities of refuse were cleared out of the city by officials specially appointed for the purpose, all sick persons were forbidden entry, and numerous instructions were issued for safeguarding the people’s health, but all to no avail.

Nor were the countless petitions humbly directed to God by the pious, whether by means of formal processions or in all other ways, any less ineffectual. For in the early spring of the year we have mentioned, the plague began, in a terrifying and extraordinary manner, to make its disastrous effects apparent.

Against these maladies, it seemed that all the advice of physicians and all the power of medicine were profitless and unavailing.

Perhaps the nature of the illness was such that it allowed no remedy: or perhaps those people who were treating the illness (whose numbers had increased enormously because the ranks of the qualified were invaded by people, both men and women, who had never received any training in medicine), being ignorant of its causes, were not prescribing the appropriate cure.

At all events, few of those who caught it ever recovered, and in most cases death occurred within three days from the appearance of the symptoms we have described, some people dying more rapidly than others, the majority without any fever or other complications.

But what made this pestilence even more severe was that whenever those suffering from it mixed with people who were still unaffected, it would rush upon these with the speed of a fire racing through dry or oily substances that happened to come within its reach.

Nor was this the full extent of its evil, for not only did it infect healthy persons who conversed or had any dealings with the sick, making them ill or visiting an equally horrible death upon them, but it also seemed to transfer the sickness to anyone touching the clothes or other objects which had been handled or used by its victims.

The plague I have been describing was of so contagious a nature that very often it visibly did more than simply pass from one person to another.

In other words, whenever an animal other than a human being touched anything belonging to a person who had been stricken or exterminated by the disease, it not only caught the sickness, but died from it almost at once.

To all of this, as I have just said, my own eyes bore witness on more than one occasion.

These things, and many others of a similar or even worse nature, caused various fears and fantasies to take root in the minds of those who were still alive and well. And almost without exception, they took a single and very inhuman precaution, namely to avoid or run away from the sick and their belongings, by which means they all thought that their own health would be preserved.

Some people were of the opinion that a sober and abstemious mode of living considerably reduced the risk of infection.

They therefore formed themselves into groups and lived in isolation from everyone else. Having withdrawn to a comfortable abode where there were no sick persons, they locked themselves in and settled down to a peaceable existence, consuming modest quantities of delicate foods and precious wines and avoiding all excesses.

They refrained from speaking to outsiders, refused to receive news of the dead or the sick, and entertained themselves with music and whatever other amusements they were able to devise.

Others took the opposite view, and maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appalling evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, gratify all of one’s cravings whenever the opportunity offered, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke.

Some people, pursuing what was possibly the safer alternative, callously maintained that there was no better or more efficacious remedy against a plague than to run away from it.

Swayed by this argument, and sparing no thought for anyone but themselves, large numbers of men and women abandoned their city, their homes, their relatives, their estates and their belongings, and headed for the countryside, either in Florentine territory or, better still, abroad.

This scourge had implanted so great a terror in the hearts of men and women that brothers abandoned brothers, uncles their nephews, sisters their brothers, and in many cases wives deserted their husbands.

But even worse, and almost incredible, was the fact that fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children, as though they did not belong to them.

Hence the countless numbers of people who fell ill, both male and female, were entirely dependent upon either the charity of friends (who were few and far between) or the greed of servants, who remained in short supply despite the attraction of high wages out of all proportion to the services they performed.

Furthermore, these latter were men and women of coarse intellect and the majority were unused to such duties, and they did little more than hand things to the invalid when asked to do so and watch over him when he was dying. And in performing this kind of service, they frequently lost their lives as well as their earnings.

Well, these are just excerpts from such a highly original and such a highly impactful read, dear folks!

Do grab for yourself a copy rightaway through the plethora of e-portals, and do spend some quality time reading through this intense and impactful read of sorts!

So yup! here’s wishing you an amazing time with books and books and books during these precious holidays, dear folks!

image: kobodotcom