Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Trash (1988)

  I was bitten as a child by a monkey—a dirty-furred, gray-faced creature kept caged by the lake where my stepfather would go on Sunday to try for a catfish dinner. That monkey was so mean she was famous for it. She had an old red collar with a bell on it, and I always wondered how anyone got close enough to her to put it on. When we’d tried to feed her sugar water from my sister’s baby bottle, she’d jumped for the wire mesh walls of her cage and shrieked into my sister’s terrified face. Then she’d grabbed the nipple off the bottle before any of us could pull it away, chewed it into little pieces and spit them out, swung down and grabbed handfuls of sand and fish scales from the bottom of the cage and thrown them at us. In stunned slow motion, my little sister started to blink and cry, and the monkey came up like an avenging angel to catch her long blond hair and try to pull her through the wire mesh. It happened so fast, I couldn’t think. I put one hand flat against the cage, grabbed my sister’s hair close to her scalp, and set myself to fight the monkey for her. But the monkey was faster—faster and smarter. She dropped the hair and sprang against the mesh, curled little monkey claws around my wrist, and began to happily chew off my little finger while grinning up into my eyes. The man who managed the fishing camp ran over with a string of dead fish and used them to beat the monkey off. I got my hand back with a web of fine toothy slices ridging my knuckles and wrist. The curious thing was that after that, I loved that monkey. When we’d go back to the fishing camp, I’d show off my gouged and dented fingers to the other kids and boast. “See. She ate a piece of me.” All the kids in the camp would come to see, then go over to toss fish heads and stones into her cage. They were awed and fascinated, and more than a little scared, too. The monkey, with her gnat-eaten neck and mad red eyes, shrieked and shrieked. Eventually, too many parents complained about the noise and the stink. They dropped the monkey, cage and all, into the center of the lake. Toni loved my story of the fishing camp, said it made her southern literature class come alive when she reread the books in my drawl. “Trailer parks and fishing camps—that’s where we growing our storytellers these days. You got possibilities, girl, as a true storyteller. Put a little work into it and you could be famous.” “Right, make a living at it, no doubt.”

• From Trash (1988)

  She just fell in that ditch and lay there awhile before we went out and found her.” Maybe that was the story I should have written, but it was not. By the time I got back to my big complicated household, I was working on the story of what Grandma Mattie Lee might have been like as a girl. What if? And I was in it, watching Shirley beat on the steps with that broom handle. Would I have made Mattie Lee so heroic if my own mother had not hidden her death from me, if my uncle had not spoken so brutally? Maybe. Still, what I wrote felt right on the page, and from this distance that seems the primary fact. I did a lot of things because it felt right on the page, or sounded right when read out loud in an empty room. I did not finish that story in Tallahassee. I did not finish that story till Brooklyn, fully fifteen years after my grandmother’s death. Even then, I think I finished it because I fell in love with that teenage girl, her mouth full of white and her eyes full of fire. It worked well enough that it was another of the stories my mama would never talk to me about. “Now that’s mean,” my mama said about one of the stories I sent her. She smiled and gave a little shudder when she said it. That is what I intended, I told her. I want it mean. I did not say that I also wanted the story to be about love and compassion. For that sometimes I had to dig deeper, into the muscle of character. Still, I think you can tell that I loved my impossible grandmother with my whole heart, her black brows and wide face, her bulldog glare and frank inclination to tell me things my mother never intended me to learn. I knew she worked her children the way her mother had worked her, putting them out to pick strawberries for neighboring farmers and pocketing the money to buy snuff. I knew she was quick to slap and full of desperation, but I knew also that in the context of how she had been raised and what she had survived, she was almost gentle, almost sweet-tempered. But not quite. I had sweet-tempered cousins and I saw them get ground down. I had gentle aunts and it seemed they almost disappeared out of their own lives. Is it any wonder that when I set out to write stories, I made up women like my grandmother, like my great-grandmother? Troublesome, angry, complicated women with secretive, unpredictable natures—that is who you will find in my stories—and little girls who were not me. What are these stories about? Shame and outrage, pride and stubbornness, and the vital necessity of a sense of humor.

• From Trash (1988)

  Tears were running down my face. My aunt turned to me, her wide pale face as wet as mine. “Just come home with me. Come home for a little while. Be with your mama a little while. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to forgive anybody. You just have to love her the way she loves you. Like I love you. Oh girl, don’t you know how we love you!” I put my hands out, let them fall apart on the pool table. My aunt was suddenly across from me, reaching across the table, taking my hands, sobbing into the cold dirty stillness—an ugly sound, not softened by the least self-consciousness. When I leaned forward, she leaned to me and our heads met, her gray hair against my temple brightened by the sunlight pouring in the windows. “Oh, girl! Girl, you are our precious girl.” I cried against her cheek, and it was like being five years old again in the roadhouse, with Annie’s basket against my hip, the warmth in the room purely a product of the love that breathed out from my aunt and my mama. If they were not mine, if I was not theirs, who was I? I opened my mouth, put my tongue out, and tasted my aunt’s cheek and my own. Butter and salt, dust and beer, sweat and stink, flesh of my flesh. “Precious,” I breathed back to her. “Precious.” Demon Lover K aty always said she wanted to be the Demon Lover, the one we desire even when we know it is not us she wants, but our souls. When she comes back to me now, she comes in that form and I never fail to think that the shadows at her shoulders could be wings. She comes in when I am not quite asleep and brings me fully awake by laying cold fingers on my warm back. Her pale skin gleams in the moonlight, reflecting every beam like a mirror of smoked glass while her teeth and nails shine phosphorescent. “Wake up,” Katy whispers, and leans over to bite my naked shoulder. “Wake up. Wake up!” “No,” I say, “not you.” But I knew she was coming. I could hear her echoes peeling back off the moments, the way Aunt Raylene always said she could hear a spell coming on. Katy’s persistent. Some of my ghosts are so faded: they only come when I reach for them. This one reaches for me. “Sit up,” she says. “I won’t bite you.” But her teeth are sharp in the pale light, and I sit up warily. The only predictable thing about Katy was her stubborn perversity; she would mostly do whatever she swore solemnly she would not. “Shit,” I whisper, and roll over. She laughs and passes me a joint. The smoke wreathes her like a cloak, heavy and sweet around us. I inhale deeply, grin up at her and say, “My hallucinations get me stoned.” “Lucky you.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  This humanity of the king was greatly commended and attributed for great honour to the apothecary and his daughter, which latter abode as well pleased as ever was woman of her lover, and sustained of better hope, in a few days recovered and became fairer than ever. When she was whole again, the king, having taken counsel with the queen of what return he should make her for so much love, mounting one day to horse with many of his barons, repaired to the apothecary's house and entering the garden, let call Master Bernardo and his daughter; then, the queen presently coming thither with many ladies and having received Lisa among them, they fell to making wonder-merry. After a while, the king and queen called Lisa to them and the former said to her, 'Noble damsel, the much love you have borne us hath gotten you a great honour from us, wherewith we would have you for the love of us be content; to wit, that, since you are apt for marriage, we would have you take him to husband whom we shall bestow on you, purposing, notwithstanding this, to call ourselves still your knight, without desiring aught from you of so much love but one sole kiss.' The damsel, grown all vermeil in the face for shamefastness, making the king's pleasure hers, replied in a low voice on this wise, 'My lord, I am well assured that, were it known that I had fallen enamoured of you, most folk would account me mad therefor, thinking belike that I had forgotten myself and knew not mine own condition nor yet yours; but God, who alone seeth the hearts of mortals, knoweth that, in that same hour whenas first you pleased me, I knew you for a king and myself for the daughter of Bernardo the apothecary and that it ill beseemed me to address the ardour of my soul unto so high a place. But, as you know far better than I, none here below falleth in love according to fitness of election, but according to appetite and inclination, against which law I once and again strove with all my might, till, availing no farther, I loved and love and shall ever love you. But, since first I felt myself taken with love of you, I determined still to make your will mine; wherefore, not only will I gladly obey you in this matter of taking a husband at your hands and holding him dear whom it shall please you to bestow on me, since that will be mine honour and estate, but, should you bid me abide in the fire, it were a delight to me, an I thought thereby to pleasure you. To have you, a king, to knight, you know how far it befitteth me, wherefore to that I make no farther answer; nor shall the kiss be vouchsafed you, which alone of my love you would have, without leave of my lady the queen. Natheless, of such graciousness as hath been yours towards me and that of our lady the queen here God render you for me both thanks and recompense, for I have not the wherewithal.' And with that she was silent.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  spat on the burn. He did this many times. The boy and the boy’s father returned two weeks later with some bags of groceries and a wood carving in gratitude for the healing. There was no sign or mark of the burn on the boy’s body. “My story is like a falling star,” I said as we watched a small universe blaze and fall from the sky. “That star was a person. It was a being of fire that laughed and cried. Someone is missing that star in the sky. The star’s lover is bereft, calling its name.” As I spoke, I realized that I did not want to be alone beneath the eternal sweep of the sky. His eyes told me, neither did he. He took my hand and pulled me close against him. I liked his earthy smell, his muscular definition. We became lovers. I was sixteen. I got involved with the school theater program as a production assistant for our fall school production of Shelagh Delaney’s A Taste of Honey. I enjoyed being part of the process of the play as it unfolded from a few pages in a thin book of poetic, dramatic storytelling, with characters who were much like us, to the building of lights, sets, blocking, acting, and the culmination to opening night, where the magic was let loose. Our drama coach, Rolland Meinholtz, was a master teacher. He expected us to be professional, and we responded in like manner. He was one of the first people to teach me this foundation principle in the art of teaching. I wasn’t a theater major, nor did I take any music or creative writing classes. I was fully ensconced in 2-D arts, taking drawing and painting classes. I’ll never forget hanging with a friend on the steps of our dorm as we filled out our elective choices for spring semester. I remember her urging me to sign up for an acting class with her. She was dramatic and extroverted, so that made sense to me, for her. I felt I was more suited to bending close to canvas and finding the path through color and design. “No,” I told her. “I will never get on a stage.” Yet I went ahead and scribbled out my previous choice and wrote in “acting.” In retrospect I believe the knowing was directly involved in this change. It was not my conscious choice. I learned that acting was not just looking pretty or acting dramatically onstage.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He loved his wife dearly, and playfully called her in his letters "my heartily beloved, gracious housewife, bound hand and foot in loving service, Catharine, Lady Luther, Lady Doctor, Lady of Zulsdorf.589 Lady of the Pigmarket,590 and whatever else she may be." She was a good German Hausfrau, caring for the wants of her husband and children; she contributed to his personal comfort in sickness and health, and enabled him to exercise his hospitality. She had a strong will, and knew how to take her own part. He sometimes speaks of her as his "Lord Katie," and of himself as her "willing servant." "Katie," he said to her, "you have a pious husband who loves you; you are an empress." Once in 1535 he promised her fifty guilders if she would read the Bible through; whereupon, as he told a friend, it became a very serious matter with her." She could not understand why God commanded Abraham to do such a cruel thing as to kill his own child; but Luther pointed her to God’s sacrifice of his only Son, and to the resurrection from the dead. To Katie and to Melanchthon he wrote his last letters (five to her, three to Melanchthon) from Eisleben shortly before his death, informing her of his journey, his diet and condition, complaining of fifty Jews under the protection of the widowed Countess of Mansfeld, sending greetings to Master Philip (Melanchthon), and quieting her apprehensions about his health. "Pray read, dear Katie, the Gospel of John and the little Catechism .... You worry yourself about your God, just as if He were not Almighty, and able to create ten Doctor Martin Luthers for the old one drowned perhaps in the Saale, or fallen dead by the fireplace, or on Wolf’s fowling floor. Leave me in peace with your cares; I have a better protector than you and all the angels. He—my Protector—lies in the manger and hangs upon a Virgin’s breast, but He sits also at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. Rest, therefore, in peace. Amen."591 In his will (1542), seventeen years after his marriage, he calls her a "pious, faithful, and devoted wife, full of loving, tender care towards him." At times, however, he felt oppressed by domestic troubles, and said once he would not marry again, not even a queen. Those were passing moods. "Oh, how smoothly things move on, when man and wife sit lovingly at table! Though they have their little bickerings now and then, they must not mind that. Put up with it." "We must have patience with woman, though she be it times sharp and bitter. She presides over the household machinery, and the servants deserve occasionally a good scolding." He put the highest honor of woman on her motherhood. "All men," he said, "are conceived, born, and nursed by women. Thence come the little darlings, the highly prized heirs. This honor ought in fairness to cover up all feminine weakness."

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now that both his son and his daughter were well bestowed, the Count decided to tarry no longer in England. So he crossed the sea to Ireland as best he could and eventually arrived at Strangford,3 where he entered the service of one of the feudatories of a rural baron, performing all the usual tasks of a groom or a servant. And there he remained for many years, unrecognized by anyone, and compelled to endure great hardship and discomfort. Meanwhile, Violante, who was now called Jeannette, was being brought up by the gentlewoman in London, becoming a great favourite, not only of the lady and her husband, but of everyone else in the house and indeed of all those who knew her, and as she grew up she became so beautiful that she was a marvel to behold. Nor could anyone deny, on observing how impeccably she comported herself, that she deserved all the honour and blessings that her future might bring. Since receiving the girl from her father, the gentlewoman had never succeeded in discovering anything about him apart from what he had told her, and she now decided that the time had come for her to estimate the girl’s rank as best she could, and find her a suitable husband. But knowing her to be a woman of gentle birth, doing penance for another’s sin through no fault of her own, the Lord above, who rewards all according to their deserts, arranged matters otherwise. One must in fact conclude that He alone, out of His loving kindness, made possible the train of events which followed, in order to prevent this nobly-born maiden from falling into the hands of a commoner. The lady with whom Jeannette was living possessed an only son, who was dearly loved by both his parents, not only because he was their son but also because, being an outstandingly well-bred, talented, courageous and fine-bodied youth, he was eminently worthy of their affection. He was some six years older than Jeannette, and when he noticed how exceedingly beautiful and graceful she was becoming, he fell so deeply in love with her that he had eyes for no one else. But because he supposed her to be of low estate, he dared not ask his parents to allow him to marry her. Moreover, since he was afraid of being reproached with falling in love with a commoner, he did all he could to keep his love a secret, and thus he was afflicted with sharper pangs than any he would have suffered had he brought it into the open.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Ischia is an island very near Naples, and therein, among others, was once a very fair and sprightly damsel, by name Restituta, who was the daughter of a gentleman of the island called Marino Bolgaro and whom a youth named Gianni, a native of a little island near Ischia, called Procida, loved more than his life, as she on like wise loved him. Not only did he come by day from Procida to see her, but oftentimes anights, not finding a boat, he had swum from Procida to Ischia, at the least to look upon the walls of her house, an he might no otherwise. During the continuance of this so ardent love, it befell that the girl, being all alone one summer day on the sea-shore, chanced, as she went from rock to rock, loosening shell-fish from the stones with a knife, upon a place hidden among the cliffs, where, at once for shade and for the commodity of a spring of very cool water that was there, certain young men of Sicily, coming from Naples, had taken up their quarters with a pinnace they had. They, seeing that she was alone and very handsome and was yet unaware of them, took counsel together to seize her and carry her off and put their resolve into execution. Accordingly, they took her, for all she made a great outcry, and carrying her aboard the pinnace, made the best of their way to Calabria, where they fell to disputing of whose she should be. Brief, each would fain have her; wherefore, being unable to agree among themselves and fearing to come to worse and to mar their affairs for her, they took counsel together to present her to Frederick, King of Sicily, who was then a young man and delighted in such toys. Accordingly, coming to Palermo, they made gift of the damsel to the king, who, seeing her to be fair, held her dear; but, for that he was presently somewhat infirm of his person, he commanded that, against he should be stronger, she should be lodged in a very goodly pavilion, belonging to a garden of his he called La Cuba, and there tended; and so it was done.

• From Trash (1988)

  I stopped. Tears were running down my face. My aunt turned to me, her wide pale face as wet as mine. “Just come home with me. Come home for a little while. Be with your mama a little while. You don’t have to forgive her. You don’t have to forgive anybody. You just have to love her the way she loves you. Like I love you. Oh girl, don’t you know how we love you!” I put my hands out, let them fall apart on the pool table. My aunt was suddenly across from me, reaching across the table, taking my hands, sobbing into the cold dirty stillness—an ugly sound, not softened by the least self-consciousness. When I leaned forward, she leaned to me and our heads met, her gray hair against my temple brightened by the sunlight pouring in the windows . “Oh, girl! Girl, you are our precious girl.” I cried against her cheek, and it was like being five years old again in the roadhouse, with Annie’s basket against my hip, the warmth in the room purely a product of the love that breathed out from my aunt and my mama. If they were not mine, if I was not theirs, who was I? I opened my mouth, put my tongue out, and tasted my aunt’s cheek and my own. Butter and salt, dust and beer, sweat and stink, flesh of my flesh. “Precious,” I breathed back to her. “Precious.” Muscles of the Mind I slept through one whole year of my life—the year I did not have the money to go to graduate school the way I had expected. Being awake would have meant making decisions, and I did not know what to decide. I did not know who I was supposed to be. I dreamed through that year, heavy-lidded and silent, though I went almost every day to work as a salad girl, pickle chopper, housekeeper, waitress, substitute teacher, counter girl, or line worker in a mop factory. I could do any of that again easily—make change with one hand while wiping terrazzo with another, keep grammar-school children at their desks, slice lettuce or pickles bracing the blade with the flat of my palm, rack up two hundred mops in an hour or scrub babyshit off crib slats—but I’ve lost the ability to sleep during the day. I wake at first light, even if I have blacked out every window in the room, no matter how late I got to bed the night before.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  loved us, in peace;" and concludes: "Farewell, ye children of love and peace, The Lord of glory and all grace be with your spirit. Amen."1264 For this reason, probably, Origen called it a "Catholic" Epistle, which must be understood, however, with limitation. Though not addressed to any particular congregation, it is intended for a particular class of Christians who were in danger of relapsing into Judaizing errors. 1. Contents. The epistle is chiefly doctrinal (ch. 1–17), and winds up with some practical exhortations to walk "in the way of light," and to avoid "the way of darkness" (ch. 18–21).1265 It has essentially the same object as the Epistle to the Hebrews, though far below it in depth, originality and unction. It shows that Christianity is the all-sufficient, divine institution for salvation, and an abrogation of Judaism, with all its laws and ceremonies. Old things have passed away; all things are made new. Christ has indeed given us a law; but it is a new law, without the yoke of constraint.1266 The tables of Moses are broken that the love of Christ may be sealed in our hearts.1267 It is therefore sin and folly to assert that the old covenant is still binding. Christians should strive after higher knowledge and understand the difference. By Judaism, however, the author understands not the Mosaic and prophetic writings in their true spiritual sense, but the carnal misapprehension of them. The Old Testament is, with him, rather a veiled Christianity, which he puts into it by a mystical allegorical interpretation, as Philo, by the same method, smuggled into it the Platonic philosophy. In this allegorical conception he goes so far, that he actually seems to deny the literal historical sense. He asserts, for example, that God never willed the sacrifice and fasting, the Sabbath observance and temple-worship of the Jews, but a purely spiritual worship; and that the laws of food did not relate at all to the eating of clean and unclean animals, but only to intercourse with different classes of men, and to certain virtues and vices. His chiliasm likewise rests on an allegorical exegesis, and is no proof of a Judaizing tendency any more than in Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. He sees in the six days of creation a type of six historical millennia of work to be followed first by the seventh millennium of rest, and then by the eighth millennium of eternity, the latter being foreshadowed by the weekly Lord’s Day. The carnal Jewish interpretation of the Old Testament is a diabolical perversion. The Christians, and not the Jews, are the true Israel of God and the righteous owners of the Old Testament Scriptures. Barnabas proclaims thus an absolute separation of Christianity from Judaism. In this respect he goes further than any post-apostolic writer. He has been on that ground charged with unsound ultra-Paulinism bordering on antinomianism and heretical Gnosticism. But this is unjust.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “Our dark sides are compatible,” I told him one night as we flew with Jimi’s guitar, far from the dancers we could hear in the distance practicing in the gym, far from the school, from pain, high on smoke, sitting on the floor of his dorm room. “Hmmmmmm,” he answered. “True as horses running across mesas, breathing clouds.” “Perfect,” I answered. And then we laughed. Though he was born in a hogan and didn’t speak English until he was sent to a Catholic boarding school, and I was born in a city speaking English, we fit. My father’s tribal language was a secret used by his relatives, who didn’t like my mother because she came from a poor family. My father’s relatives and ancestors were tribal leaders, beauty queens, and artists. My mother’s relatives were musicians and storytellers and didn’t like to hold nine-to-five jobs. My parents were from enemy tribes, which set up a conflict in my blood. Herbie’s spirit gleamed and spun and called to me to climb higher and higher. We flew, and all the weight of fear and doubt fell away. Georgette was in love with Clarence, Herbie’s cousin from the other side of the Navajo reservation. Clarence was one of those shy-eyed Navajo men with big eyelashes and a tight, tapered back. He lived for rodeo, for horses, bulls, and girls. Georgette’s moods fluctuated according to her sightings of Clarence. He was her sole focus and the reason for her beauty tricks. “So did Clarence ask you to marry him today?” I joked. Georgette glared at me. “That Mexican girl better go back where she came from, is all I can say,” she snapped. She was talking about Lupita. “You mean the opera singer,” I answered. Lupita wanted to be an opera singer, went the rumor, but the idea of any of us becoming an opera singer seemed preposterous. It was wildly possible, just not likely. Most of us girls would most likely move home, have babies, and do art at the kitchen table. Partying in the ditch the previous weekend, Lupita hadn’t looked like an opera singer; she was one of us. I could still hear her laugh as we ran through the dark from the dorm police. It was a trained laugh—and for a moment I could imagine her as an opera singer, far away from here, on a stage where her talent and shine could amount to something. She was half Mexican, and her father was from a tribe in Oregon I had never heard of until I came here to school. The word was, this school was her last chance. Herbie told me that Clarence had made a bet he could have Lupita within a week. She would be easy. All the boys were watching to see what would happen and were placing bets. “Did you place a bet?” I asked Herbie. “No way,” he answered.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Still feeling somewhat apprehensive, the girl refused his company, but did not succeed in shaking him off till he had escorted her all the way to her door. He then proceeded to his father’s house, where he declared that he would on no account return to the country. His father and family were greatly displeased about this, but allowed him to stay in the hope of discovering what had caused him to change his mind. Now that Cimon’s heart, which no amount of schooling had been able to penetrate, was pierced by Love’s arrow through the medium of Iphigenia’s beauty, he suddenly began to display a lively interest in one thing after another, to the amazement of his father, his whole family, and everyone else who knew him. He first of all asked his father’s permission to wear the same sort of clothes as his brothers, including all the frills with which they were in the habit of adorning themselves, and to this his father very readily agreed. He then began to associate with young men of excellence, observing the manners befitting a gentleman, more especially those of a gentleman in love, and within a very short space of time, to everyone’s enormous stupefaction, he not only acquired the rudiments of learning but became a paragon of intelligence and wit. Furthermore (and this again was a consequence of his love for Iphigenia), he abandoned his coarse and rustic accent, adopting a manner of speech that was more seemly and civilized, and even became an accomplished singer and musician, whilst in horse-riding and in martial prowess, whether on sea or land, he distinguished himself by his skill and daring. In short, (without going into further detail about his various accomplishments), in the space of four years from the day he had fallen in love, he turned out to be the most graceful, refined, and versatile young man in the island of Cyprus. What, then, are we to say, fair ladies, of this young man? Surely, all we need say is that the lofty virtues instilled by Heaven in Cimon’s valiant spirit were chained together and locked away by envious Fortune in a very small section of his heart, and that her mighty bonds had been shattered and torn apart by a much more powerful force, in other words that of Love. Being a rouser of sleeping talents, Love had rescued those virtues from the darkness in which they had lain so cruelly hidden, and forced them into the light, clearly displaying whence he draws, and whither he leads, those creatures who are subject to his rule and illumined by his radiance.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Not many years ago, there lived in Bologna a brilliant physician of almost universal renown, and perhaps he is alive to this day, whose name was Master Alberto.1 Although he was an old man approaching seventy, and the natural warmth had almost entirely departed from his body, his heart was so noble that he was not averse to welcoming the flames of love. One day, whilst attending a feast, he had seen a strikingly beautiful woman, a widow whose name, according to some accounts, was Malgherida de’ Ghisolieri. He was mightily attracted by the lady, and, no differently than if he had been in the prime of his youth, he felt those flames so keenly in his mature old breast, that he never seemed able to sleep at night, unless in the course of the day he had seen the fair lady’s fine and delectable features. Hence he began to pass regularly up and down in front of the lady’s house, sometimes on foot and sometimes on horseback, depending on his mood. And accordingly both she and several other ladies quickly divined his motive, and often jested with one another to see a man of such great age and wisdom caught in the toils of love. For the good ladies seemed to suppose that the delightful sensations of love could take root and thrive in no other place than the frivolous hearts of the young. Master Alberto continued to pass up and down, and one Sunday, whilst the lady happened to be seated outside her front door with a number of other ladies, they caught sight of him in the distance, coming in their direction. Whereupon they all resolved, with the lady’s agreement, to receive him and do him honour, and then make fun of him over this great passion of his. And that was precisely what they did. For they all stood up and invited him to accompany them into a cool walled garden, where they plied him with excellent wines and sweetmeats, and eventually they asked him, charmingly and with good grace, how it came about that he had fallen in love with this fair lady, when he was well aware that she was being courted by many a handsome, well-bred and sprightly young admirer. On hearing himself chided so politely, the doctor replied, smiling broadly:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Since, as you perceive, I belong to you unreservedly, it is not without reason that I will venture to address my pleas to your noble heart, which is the one true source of all my peace, all my contentment, and all my well-being. Dearest beloved, since I am yours and you alone have the power to fortify my soul with some vestige of hope as I languish in the fiery flames of love, I beseech you, as your most humble servant, to show me some mercy and mitigate the harshness you have been wont to display towards me in the past. Your compassion will console me, enabling me to claim that it is to your beauty that I owe, not only my love, but also my very life, which will assuredly fail unless your proud spirit yields to my entreaties, and then indeed people will be able to say that you have killed me. Now, leaving aside the fact that my death would not enhance your reputation, I believe, also, that your conscience would occasionally trouble you and you would be sorry for having been the cause of it, and sometimes, when you were even more favourably disposed, you would say to yourself: “Alas, how wrong it was of me not to take pity on my poor Zima!” But this repentance of yours, coming too late, would only serve to heighten your distress. ‘Therefore, in order to forestall so regrettable an outcome, instead of allowing me to die, take pity on me whilst there is still time, for in you alone lies the power of making me the happiest or the most wretched man alive. It is my hope and my belief that you will not be so unkind as to allow death to be my reward for such passionate devotion, and that you will gladly consent to my humble entreaty, thus restoring my failing spirits, which have turned quite faint with awe in your gracious presence.’ At this point, his words trailed off into silence and he began to heave enormous sighs, after which his eyes shed a certain number of tears and he settled back into his chair to await the noble lady’s answer. Though she had previously remained unmoved by Zima’s protracted courtship, his tilting at the jousts, his aubades, and all the other ways in which he had demonstrated his devotion, the lady was certainly stirred now by the tender words of affection addressed to her by this passionate suitor, so that, for the first time in her life, she began to understand what it meant to be in love. And despite the fact that, in obedience to her husband’s instructions, she said nothing, she was unable to restrain herself from uttering one or two barely perceptible sighs, thus betraying what she would willingly have made clear to Zima, had she been able to reply.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In that famous tale, concerning Ghismonda’s ill-fated love for Guiscardo, there is a phrase which neatly encapsulates the naturalistic attitude to human relationships that Boccaccio consistently adopts, especially in his handling of amatory material. The phrase is spoken by Guiscardo, and is all the more memorable because he says nothing else in a narrative conspicuous for the lengthy speeches of its two other leading characters. Guiscardo has been arrested on the orders of his master, Tancredi, whilst on his way to the bedchamber of Tancredi’s daughter, Ghismonda. When Tancredi charges him with disloyalty to a benevolent master, Guiscardo tersely replies that ‘Amor può troppo piú che né voi né io possiamo’ (‘The power of Love is greater than your power or mine’). The words are reminiscent of Virgil’s ‘Omnia vincit Amor; et nos cedamus Amori,’ (‘Love conquers all; let us then yield to Love!’).24 But they also recall Francesca’s celebrated justification of her love for Paolo in the fifth canto of Dante’s Inferno, where she pleads that Love compels a loved one to love in return (‘Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona…’). Whereas Dante, however, intends that his reader shall reject this superficially attractive and plausible defence of the surrender to sexual passion, Boccaccio both in the story of Ghismonda and elsewhere in the Decameron seems intent upon showing its validity. Not only that, he implies that any attempt to interfere with the natural progression of instinctive forces is doomed to failure, sometimes with disastrous results for the parties concerned. The story of Ghismonda is a clear illustration of this principle, which finds expression on the theoretical plane in the author’s warmly argued reply to his critics in the Introduction to the Fourth Day. There, as was seen earlier, Boccaccio lists the various objections that have been raised, or so at least he claims, to the tales already told, the first of these objections being that he is altogether too fond of the ladies, and that it is unseemly for him to take so much pleasure in entertaining them, consoling them and singing their praises. In answering this charge, Boccaccio characteristically employs the tools of his own craft, narrating the tale of a young man who, brought up from early childhood by a pious widowed father in total isolation, visits Florence for the first time, and no sooner catches his first glimpse of a group of young women than all his desires, all his curiosity, all the leanings of his affection are centred upon them, and them alone. The moral of the tale is self-evident, but in case anyone has failed to apprehend it, the author spells it out in a passage which, with its emphasis upon the strength and pleasures of natural affection, offers some indication of his essentially naturalistic philosophy. Ostensibly addressing his lady readers, Boccaccio writes:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The field through which we are roaming today is exceedingly broad, and it would be very easy for anyone to try his skill there, not only once but a dozen times, since Fortune has stocked it so abundantly with her marvels and afflictions. But to choose a single story from among the infinite number that could be narrated, I shall begin by telling you that when the Roman imperial authority1 passed from French into German hands, the two nations became sworn enemies and made bitter and continuous war upon one another. Accordingly, in order to defend their own country and attack the other, the King of France and his son mobilized all their kingdom’s resources, including those of their friends and kinsfolk, and assembled a huge army to march against their enemies. But before proceeding any further, not wishing to leave their country ungoverned, and knowing that Walter, Count of Antwerp, was a noble, intelligent man and a most loyal friend and servant to their cause, and thinking, moreover, that although he was well skilled in the art of war, his talents would be even better employed in the subtleties of state government, they left him to rule over the whole of the kingdom of France as their viceroy, and went upon their way. And so it was that Walter settled down to the wise and orderly performance of his duties, always consulting the Queen and her daughter-in-law on all matters of importance, for although they had been left under his custody and jurisdiction, he treated them as far as possible with the same degree of deference that he would have displayed towards his rulers and superiors. This Walter was about forty years old, physically very handsome, and as agreeable and courteous a nobleman as you could ever imagine. Moreover, apart from being the most elegantly dressed, he was more refined and graceful in bearing than any other knight of his times. Now, it so happened that while the King of France and his son were away at the wars we have mentioned, Walter’s wife died, leaving him a widower with two small children, a boy and a girl. And whilst he was continuing to hold court with the aforesaid ladies, frequently sounding out their opinions on weighty matters of state, the wife of the King’s son cast her eyes upon him, and being hugely taken with his handsome looks and agreeable manners, she fell violently and secretly in love. Considering her own unspoilt, youthful appearance and the fact that he was not tied to any woman, she thought it would be an easy matter to obtain what she wanted, and since only her shame seemed to be standing in her way, she decided to be rid of it and lay her cards on the table. So one day, finding herself alone and feeling the time to be ripe, she summoned him to her room under the pretext of discussing affairs of state.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Cruel indeed is the topic for discussion assigned to us today by our king, especially when you consider that, having come here to fortify our spirits, we are obliged to recount people’s woes, the telling of which cannot fail to arouse compassion in speaker and listener alike. Perhaps he has done it in order to temper in some degree the gaiety of the previous days; but whatever his motive, it is not for me to alter his decree, and I shall therefore relate an occurrence that was not only pitiful, but calamitous, and fully worthy of our tears. Tancredi, Prince of Salerno, was a most benevolent ruler, and kindly of disposition, except for the fact that in his old age he sullied his hands with the blood of passion. In all his life he had but a single child, a daughter, and it would have been better for him if he had never had any at all. He was as passionately fond of this daughter as any father who has ever lived, and being unable to bring himself to part with her, he refused to marry her off, even when she was several years older than the usual age for taking a husband.2 Eventually, he gave her to a son of the Duke of Capua, but shortly after her marriage she was left a widow and returned to her father. In physique and facial appearance, she was as beautiful a creature as there ever was; she was youthful and vivacious, and she possessed rather more intelligence than a woman needs. In the house of her doting father she led the life of a great lady, surrounded by comforts of every description. But realizing that her father was so devoted to her that he was in no hurry to make her a second marriage, and feeling that it would be shameless to approach him on the subject, she decided to see whether she could find herself a secret lover who was worthy of her affections. In her father’s court, she encountered many people of the kind to be found in any princely household, of whom some were nobly bred and others not. Having studied the conduct and manners of several of these, she was attracted to one above all the rest – a young valet of her father’s called Guiscardo, who was a man of exceedingly humble birth, but noble in character and bearing. By dint of seeing him often, before very long she fell madly and secretly in love with him, and her admiration of his ways grew steadily more profound. As for the young man himself, not being slow to take a hint, from the moment he perceived her interest in him he lost his heart to her so completely that he could think of virtually nothing else.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  When you consider that even an apprentice hermit, a witless youth who was more of a wild animal than a human being, liked you better than anything he had ever seen, it is perfectly clear that those who criticize me on these grounds are people who, being ignorant of the strength and the pleasures of natural affection, neither love you nor desire your love, and they are not worth bothering about.25 But it is towards the end of his vigorous reply to the strictures of his critics that one finds the fullest confirmation of his respect for natural laws, for he declares that to love a woman is to do what is natural, and that in order to oppose the laws of nature, one has to possess exceptional powers. Even if a man possesses such powers, he will often use them, not only in vain, but to his own serious harm. For himself, he confesses that he does not have such powers at his disposal, and that even if he did, he would sooner pass them on to others than use them himself.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  You are to know, then, that in Lombardy there was once a convent, widely renowned for its sanctity and religious fervour, which housed a certain number of nuns, one of them being a girl of gentle birth, endowed with wondrous beauty, whose name was Isabetta. One day, having come to the grating to converse with a kinsman of hers, she fell in love with a handsome young man who was with him; and the young man, observing that she was very beautiful, and divining her feelings through the language of the eyes, fell no less passionately in love with her. For some little time, to the no small torment of each, their love remained unfulfilled; but eventually, their desire for one another being equally acute, the young man thought of a way for him and his nun to forgather in secret; and with her willing consent he visited her not only once but over and over again, to their intense and mutual delight. This went on for some considerable time until one night, unbeknown either to himself or to Isabetta, he was seen by one of the other nuns as he left her cell and proceeded on his way. The nun told several of her companions, who at first were inclined to report Isabetta to the Abbess, a lady called Madonna Usimbalda, whose goodness and piety were a byword among all the nuns and everyone else who knew her. But on second thoughts they decided, so that their story should admit of no denial, to try and arrange for the Abbess to catch her red-handed with the young man. So they kept it to themselves, and secretly took it in turns to keep her under close and constant watch in order to take her in flagrante. Now Isabetta knew nothing of all this, and one night, taking no special care, she happened to arrange for her lover to come. This he no sooner did than he was espied by the nuns whose business it was to keep watch, and after biding their time until well into the night, the nuns formed themselves into two separate groups, the first mounting guard at the entrance to Isabetta’s cell whilst the second hurried off to the chamber of the Abbess. Their knocking at the door was promptly acknowledged by the Abbess, and so they called out to her, saying: ‘Get up, Mother Abbess, come quickly! We’ve discovered Isabetta has a young man with her in her cell!’

• From Carmina (-50)

  Lesbia mi praesente uiro mala plurima dicit: haec illi fatuo maxima laetitia est. mule, nihil sentis: si nostri oblita taceret, sana esset: nunc quod gannit et obloquitur, non solum meminit, sed, quae multo acrior est res, 5 irata est: hoc est, uritur et loquitur. LXXXIV Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda uellet dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, et tum mirifice sperabat se esse locutum, cum quantum poterat dixerat hinsidias. credo, sic mater, sic Liber auunculus eius, 5 sic maternus auus dixerat atque auia. hoc misso in Syriam requierant omnibus aures: audibant eadem haec leniter et leuiter, nec sibi postilla metuebant talia uerba, cum subito affertur nuntius horribilis, 10 Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset, iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios. LXXXV Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. LXXXVI Quintia formosa est multis, mihi candida, longa, recta est: haec ego sic singula confiteor. totum illud formosa nego: nam nulla uenustas, nulla in tam magno est corpore mica salis. Lesbia formosa est, quae cum pulcerrima tota est, 5 tum omnibus una omnis surripuit Veneres. LXXXVII Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam uere, quantum a me Lesbia amata mea es. nulla fides nullo fuit umquam in foedere tanta, quanta in amore tuo ex parte reperta mea est. LXXXVIII Quid facit is, Gelli, qui cum matre atque sorore prurit et abiectis peruigilat tunicis? quid facit is, patruum qui non sinit esse maritum? ecquid scis quantum suscipiat sceleris? suscipit, o Gelli, quantum non ultima Tethys 5 nec genitor Nympharum abluit Oceanus: nam nihil est quicquam sceleris, quo prodeat ultra, non si demisso se ipse uoret capite. LXXXIX Gellius est tenuis: quid ni? cui tam bona mater tamque ualens uiuat tamque uenusta soror tamque bonus patruus tamque omnia plena puellis cognatis, quare is desinat esse macer? qui ut nihil attingat, nisi quod fas tangere non est, 5 quantumuis quare sit macer inuenies. XC Nascatur Magus ex Gelli matrisque nefando coniugio et discat Persicum aruspicium: nam magus ex matre et nato gignatur oportet, si uera est Persarum impia religio, natus ut accepto ueneretur carmine diuos 5 omentum in flamma pingue liquefaciens. XCI Non ideo, Gelli, sperabam te mihi fidum in misero hoc nostro, hoc perdito amore fore, quod te cognossem bene constantemue putarem aut posse a turpi mentem inhibere probro; sed neque quod matrem nec germanam esse uidebam 5 hanc tibi, cuius me magnus edebat amor. et quamuis tecum multo coniungerer usu, non satis id causae credideram esse tibi. tu satis id duxti: tantum tibi gaudium in omni culpa est, in quacumque est aliquid sceleris. 10 XCII Lesbia mi dicit semper male nec tacet umquam de me: Lesbia me dispeream nisi amat. quo signo? quia sunt totidem mea: deprecor illam assidue, uerum dispeream nisi amo. XCIII Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi uelle placere, nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo. XCIV Mentula moechatur. moechatur mentula certe. hoc est quod dicunt, ipsa olera olla legit. XCV