Growing Misery - Isabellas Tragic Tale - Essay Example

Academia - Research December 2009 Growing Misery: Isabella’s Tragic Tale Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, written in the mid-1300s, became very famousin and after its time, for its tales of love and lust. It was sometimes taken away from young readers because of its lavisciousness. It grew more popular because it was forbidden. Its fame grew so much that it became one of the books that all literate people would read, through the ages. It is valid to say that most authors and poets of the Middle Ages, and then the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period, read Boccaccio’s Decameron and were impressed by it. John Keats was a poet of the second generation of Romantic poets. His poetry was seen as so unusual and innovative that it was not well received by critics of the time. He was often criticized badly in articles in literary reviews. It did not stop him, and he went on to write a large quantity of short and long poems in his brief life. He knew a number of other poets, and it is almost certain that all of them were familiar with the Decameron. Looking - as all poets looked - for inspiration in nature was becoming boring and stilted in those days. Keats turned to ‘urban’ poetry, or poetry about people who lived in towns rather than in picturesque countryside landscapes. He was deeply interested in history and folklore, so using Boccaccio’s work as a springboard cannot be seen as something surprising. Keats was not the only writer by far who used Boccaccio for inspiration, but his Isabella poem became one of the best known and loved. The Decameron is a set of one hundred tales, supposedly told by a group of people on a number of evenings. They tried to out-do each other with romantic or lewd stories. The one John Keats chose was perhaps one of the most memorable. Or perhaps it became more memorable because he chose it, for the work that ensued was to become famous, and make Keats one of the Romantic movement’s most well-known poets. He took the Fifth Tale on the Fourth Day, a tale narrated by Philomena (who is not mentioned in the poem) to the group gathered by night in Boccaccio’s story. Turning it into one of his longest poems, Keats dwells at length on the emotions of Isabella, a young Italian woman who - to the dismay of her brothers - falls in love with a young man called Lorenzo. In the Decameron, the jealousy and spite of the brothers is much more pronounced than in Keats’ poem. The original version, in Italian, goes into great detail about their wicked emotions and their dastardly plans. They could not stand to see their sister so in love. And they could not stand the fact that it was Lorenzo, a nice enough young man who was accepted at court. They were bent on destruction and malice in spite of their sister’s love. At the time and place the Decameron was written - Italy in the 1300s - women did not have many rights. They were not independent beings, but relied on their fathers - or their brothers, or any male relative if the others were no longer alive - for everything. They could not earn their own living, and were subject to the whims of the men in their families. Such was the fate of Isabella. In Boccaccio’s tale, the fact of the subjugation of womenfolk is taken for granted. As a matter of fact, the whole story would have no premise if this social circumstance did not exist. Isabella only met her fate because her brothers had a lot of power, and she lived with them and was subject to their wants, behests and decrees. Sisters were often like servants. This is not made absolutely clear in Keats’ version, because nearly three hundred years had passed, and although women were by no means free, independent, or equal to men, the feudal days when women were more or less slaves were over. In addition, Keats was an Englishman writing in England. He went through a phase of medievalism, when he was fascinated by stories such as Isabella’s and loved to write poetry related to that period, because it was romantic and had themes of chivalry, of which he was fond. He also liked melancholic themes of love. That is how he slanted his Isabella, or the Pot of Basil. He wrote it as a bitter-sweet tragedy in which a sad maiden is treated badly by her treacherous brothers, and who then goes maudlin and puts her dead lover’s head in a pot, where she grows lush basil. Boccaccio’s tale is not bitter-sweet, and although not as bawdy as some other tales in his book, is more rollicking and full of the swaggering of men and the desperation and madness of a wronged woman. Isabella’s brothers murder her lover and bury him in a forest: in Boccaccio’s story it is as if such violence is a daily or common occurrence. Historic accounts bear this out: the Middle Ages were violent times of battles, family feuds and regional battles, especially on the Italian peninsula, which was not one country, but a series of principalities and duchies. Keats does not go into this kind of history, and leaves out the notable fact that this story was supposed to take place in Messina, a town on the island of Sicily, where feudal battles and warring families often lived out similar events. Instead, he treats the folkloric tale as a singular tragic event, and paints around it stanza after stanza of descriptive poetry, with leaves, woods, roses, horses and streams. Even when he is writing about the burial of the murdered man, he includes nature: Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers, Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers. Even when Keats is describing the grisly act of Isabella wrapping the severed head of her dead lover in a scarf, he does not fail to include romantic notions of scents and balms. He writes that the stricken young woman anoints the scarf with exotic perfumes: Then in a silken scarf, ---sweet with the dews Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby, And divine liquids come with odorous ooze Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully, ---- She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose A garden-pot... Boccaccio makes it sound much more macabre, and does not render Isabella romantic, but half-crazed with sorrow, in this way: Not long after, the Nurse having brought her a large earthen pot, such as we use to set Basile, Marjerom, Flowers, or other sweet hearbes in, and shrouding the head in a silken Scarfe, put it into the pot, covering it with earth, and planting divers rootes of excellent Basile therein, which she never watered, but either with her teares... Boccaccio was not concerned with any Romantic movement, but with a kind of medieval realism - even though it was very wordy - that tried to startle readers with its horrific content. Boccaccio makes sure he mentions how Isabella cut the head off her lover’s corpse, going into great detail about the whole operation in the forest. Then he uses words such as ‘putrefaction’ to describe the head when her brothers find it after stealing her pot of basil. Keats does no such thing. He writes perhaps the most beautiful stanza of the whole poem, showing the woeful despair of his beautiful protagonist: And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not: but in peace Hung over her sweet basil evermore, And moisten’d it with tears unto the core. These poetic words do not suggest a crazed young woman, but a despondent lady who tries to soothe her own grief. The repetition of the word ‘forgot’ although it does hint of a kind of mental illness, is poetically and romantically used, so that it is more like a melancholic elegy than an insane and violent drama. It is however, the same story, and Keats does not try to persuade the reader that he thought it through himself. He mentions the original storyteller by name in the poem, O eloquent and famed Boccaccio! The first storyteller was indeed eloquent: he wrote at length in a persuasive manner, in a style that today seems overly verbose and purple. It was the style of his time, when few people were literate and - as he tells in his narrative - would listen to each other telling tales for nights on end, rather than read on their own. In Keats’ time, many more of the population could read, and his works were suitable to be read alone, or perhaps for parts to be read to a small group. This is a very long poem of 63 stanzas, which suggests quiet reading by just one person. Unlike the work from which it is ‘borrowed’, Isabella or The Pot of Basil was never confiscated from its readers, or forbidden to be read by a particular group. It was never considered bawdy or inappropriate: perhaps because it was already seen as an unlikely or unbelievable fireside tale, or because the dark medieval days of damsels and feudal lords was over. Or because it was beautiful. Ultimately, both works are masterpieces in their own right, and although the subject is the same, its treatment is vastly different. * Bibliography Boccaccio, Giovanni. (1325) The Decameron. Translated by Mark Musa and Thomas G. Bergin New York: Signet Classic, 2002 Stillinger, Jack (Ed) 1978 The Poems of John Keats Read More