The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (best classic books of all time txt) 📕

everything he eats or drinks, with the one exception of coffee. ↩

I.e. the Angel Gabriel. ↩

The plural of a surname is, in strictness, always used by the Italians in speaking of a man by his full name, dei being understood between the Christian and surname, as Benedetto (dei) Ferondi, Benedict of the Ferondos or Ferondo family, whilst, when he is denominated by the surname alone, it is used in the singular, il (the) being understood, e.g. (Il) Boccaccio, (Il) Ferondo, i.e. the particular Boccaccio or Ferondo in question for the nonce. ↩

Lit. and so I hope (spero), a curious instance of the ancient Dantesque use of the word spero, I hope, in its contrary sense of fear. ↩

Fornito, a notable example of what the illustrious Lewis Carroll Dodgson, Waywode of Wonderland, calls a “portmanteau-word,” a species that abounds in medieval Italian, for the confusion of translators. ↩

I.e. getting good pay and allowances (avendo buona provisione). ↩

Guadagnare l’anima, lit. gain the soul (Syn. pith, kernel, substance). This passage is ambiguous and should perhaps be rendered “catch the knack or trick” or “acquire the wish.” ↩

The next two paragraphs were left untranslated by Payne; the English text here is from J. M. Rigg’s 1903 translation. ↩

I.e. the government (corte). ↩

Lit. that scythes were no less plenty that he had arrows (che falci si trovavano non meno che egli avesse strali), a proverbial expression the exact bearing of which I do not know, but whose evident sense I have rendered in the equivalent English idiom. ↩

Syn. what he said (che si dire). See note 21 in the Day 1 introduction. ↩

Apparently the well-known fabliau of the Dame de Vergy, upon which Marguerite d’Angoulême founded the seventieth story of the Heptameron. ↩

Lit. made (Di me il feci digno). ↩

I.e. false suspicion (falso pensiero). ↩

I.e. to heaven (e costa su m’impetra la tornata). ↩

The pertinence of this allusion, which probably refers to some current Milanese proverbial saying, the word tosa, here used by Boccaccio for “wench,” belonging to the Lombard dialect, is not very clear. The expression “Milan-fashion” (alla melanese) may be supposed to refer to the proverbial materialism of the people of Lombardy. ↩

Sic (senza invidia); but the meaning is that misery alone is without enviers. ↩

I.e. blasts of calumny. ↩

I.e. having not yet accomplished. ↩

I.e. my censors. ↩

I.e. in alms. ↩

“I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound; everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need.” —⁠Philippians 4:12 ↩

I.e. benumbed (assiderati). ↩

Or airshaft (spiraglio). ↩

Lit. introduced him to me (a me lo ’ntrodussi); but Boccaccio here uses the word introdurre in its rarer literal sense to lead, to draw, to bring in. ↩

I.e. thou being the means of bringing about the conjunction (adoperandol tu). ↩

I.e. Guiscardo’s soul. ↩

I.e. in the heart. ↩

I.e. was more inclined to consider the wishes of the ladies her companions, which she divined by sympathy, than those of Filostrato, as shown by his words (più per la sua affezione cognobbe l’animo delle campagne che quello del re per le sue parole). It is difficult, however, in this instance as in many others, to discover with certainty Boccaccio’s exact meaning, owing to his affectation of Ciceronian concision and delight in obscure elliptical forms of construction; whilst his use of words in a remote or unfamiliar sense and the impossibility of deciding, in certain cases, the person of the pronouns and adjectives employed tend still farther to darken counsel. e.g., if we render affezione sentiment, cognobbe (as riconobbe) acknowledged, recognized, and read le sue parole as meaning her (instead of his) words, the whole sense of the passage is changed, and we must read it “more by her sentiment (i.e. by the tendency and spirit of her story) recognized the inclination of her companions than that of the king by her [actual] words.” I have commented thus at large on this passage, in order to give my readers some idea of the difficulties which at every page beset the translator of the Decameron and which make Boccaccio perhaps the most troublesome of all authors to render into representative English. ↩

Lit. of those who was held of the greatest casuists (di quelli che de’ maggior cassesi era tenuto). This is another very obscure passage. The meaning of the word cassesi is unknown and we can only guess it to be a dialectic (probably Venetian) corruption of the word casisti (casuists). The Giunta edition separates the word thus, casse si, making si a mere corroborative prefix to era, but I do not see how the alteration helps us, the word casse (chests, boxes) being apparently meaningless in this connection. ↩

Venetian