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c h a p t e r 1 1 The Wheel of the Decameron F rom its first clause, indeed from its first word, the Decameron signals its nontranscendence: ‘‘Umana cosa è aver compassione degli afflitti’’ (To take pity on people in distress is a human quality), begins the author, locating us in a rigorously secular context and defining its parameters.1 At this point, compassione degli afflitti belongs to an amorous register, referring to Boccaccio’s past affliction as a lover for whom his friends felt pity; thus, he claims that he is writing the Decameron to repay their kindness, since ‘‘la gratitudine, secondo che io credo, trall’altre virtù è sommamente da commendare’’ (it is my conviction that gratitude, of all the virtues, is most highly to be commended ) (Proemio, 7). Here again, the Proem continues to insist on a human set of values, for gratitude is technically not a virtue at all, but a social grace, a virtue only in that it makes life more livable. And, because he wants to make their lives more livable, Boccaccio writes for the ladies, shattering their enforced contemplation with novelle, news of life, life-surrogates. Beginning as it does with the author’s gratitude for the generosity of his friends, which encourages him in turn to show generosity to the ladies, the Decameron comes full circle by ending with the generosity —liberalità—of the characters of Day 10. Generosity, like gratitude, is a social virtue, one which palliates and civilizes the experience of living, and in fact the stories of the last Day are the final step in a process which has made the brigata fit to reenter society, to embark once more on the business of life.2 Generosity is generated by compassion ; this compassione, which motivates the author in his Proem at one end of the book and the characters of Day 10 at the other, is not only the social glue which holds together the fabric of human society, The Wheel of the Decameron 225 which literally humanizes that society, but is also the textual glue linking the several levels of the Decameron. The transition from the courtly atmosphere of the Proem to the onslaught of the great plague is mediated by compassion, either present (in the Proem) or absent (in the Florentine society afflicted by the plague as described in the Introduction to Day 1), but always the irreducible standard by which human affairs are measured. The Introduction to the First Day is the catalyst of the rest of the Decameron in that it defines the text’s negative pole, the level of loss from which the brigata must recover. The reduction of Florentine society to grade zero is accomplished rhetorically through the Introduction ’s portrayal of two discrete stages of loss which together bring about total collapse; the narrator concentrates first on the loss of ingegno and secondly on the loss of compassione. The first part of the plague narrative emphasizes intellectual failure: ‘‘in quella [la peste] non valendo alcuno senno né umano provedimento’’ (in the face of the [plague’s] onrush, all the wisdom and ingenuity of man were unavailing ) (1.Intro.9). The qualification of ‘‘provedimento’’ with the adjective ‘‘umano’’ underscores the fact that the intellect is, with compassion, the essential ingredient of human society; but here, as society crumbles, the intellect is powerless, human ingenuity is unavailing . Failure in one quintessentially human sphere leads, predictably , to failure in the other; thus the narrator passes in linear fashion from depicting the loss of ingegno to depicting the loss of compassione; since compassione is the umana cosa par excellence, its disappearance signals the final breakdown. The process of decay, once initiated, is as inevitable as the disease itself, progressing from the incapacitation of the intellect to the denial of all ethical commitment; this chain effect is indicated by the narrative sequence, which moves from the symptoms of the plague, the horrid gavoccioli which the doctors are unable to treat (Boccaccio stresses the ‘‘ignoranza de’ medicanti’’ [13]), to its powers of contamination. The fact that the disease is contagious leads to a widespread callousness toward the sufferings of others, a lack of compassion marked in narrative terms by the use of the adjective crudele : ‘‘e tutti quasi a un fine tiravano assai crudele, ciò era di schifare e di fuggire gli infermi e le lor cose’’ (And almost without exception, they took a single and very cruel precaution...

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