February?
Candide, Voltaire (1759), tr John Butt (c1947)

One of the few things I have in common with George Washington is that each of us enjoys reading aloud to his wife ― or in my case, to the person in my life who most resembles a wife, since I've never been properly married.

Before Ericka, my book of choice to read aloud from was Boccaccio's Decameron, which I have in delightful translation by G.H. McWilliam. I had been a Decameron fan for at least a decade, going all the way back to the early days of Perelandra, before either of us knew any better about copyright, when I recommended a favorite story to Pete. (It was the tenth story of the third day, one of the naughty ones and still my favorite, though a couple of others come close.)

As you may know, the Decameron is a series of one hundred stories. During the time of the Black Death ― it was written shortly after then ― ten young aristocrats, seven women and three men, escape to a less-infected country retreat. As part of their vacation amusement, on each of ten days each one of them tells a story. (The title comes from the Greek for "ten days": deka- = ten; hemera = day.)

After reading only a few of the stories, I concluded that all of them are best read aloud, and I made up my mind that from then on I wouldn't read any more of the book unless I was reading it aloud to someone. Over the next several years I would occasionally read a story to one or another of my women friends (nearly all of my friends were women in those days) ― occasionally to someone who might be an almost-girlfriend, but usually not. Willing audiences were not plentiful, and the only one I found who was truly interested went out and bought the book and read the whole thing herself, spoiling my fun, so that by the time I connected with Karen I had still read only about a third of the book.

Karen loved to be read to. Since Decameron is what I wanted to read, that's what she listened to. I later came to realize it probably wasn't a great choice for her. She was far less amused than I was by the numerous humorous accounts of casual infidelity, and she was far more offended than I was by the occasional revelation that things which are considered unacceptable today were considered fairly ordinary at the time (eg, spousal abuse).

In spite of being culturally and politically liberal, the culture I came out of had great respect for tradition and authenticity in literature, so I was surprised to find that Karen did not. Whenever a classic book is published in a new edition or made into a movie and it is rewritten so as to bring the setting into accord with today's social sensibilities (eg, to create an otherwise absent strong female character), I ask rhetorically who on earth actually approves of such an offense against literature. In typical cultural elite fashion, I always assumed it must only be the stupid masses who insist on having it that way. But then there was Karen, an intelligent person, and if it were up to her the Decameron (not to mention Tolkien...) would have been rewritten so that you'd never guess that 14th century Italy was not a post-feminist era.

She was not sufficiently impressed by the fact ― striking, if you're inclined to think of social social progress as moving steadily in one direction ― that the Decameron, although clearly written by a man, is just as clearly written for and about women, and that most intelligent characters are inevitably female. That's something you'll have trouble finding in literature from the 16th or 17th century. (For example, consider Shakespeare, compared to Chaucer.) The fact is, women enjoyed a higher social position in 14th century Europe than they did for several centuries thereafter. Historians I've read say that the status of women in society is related to demographics, and the great depopulation that attended the Black Death proved a setback from which it took several centuries to recover.

Karen and I were together for a year and a half, which might have been plenty of time to read 100 stories together. But while we did have long periods of reading one story per evening (we particularly liked them as bedtime stories), there were also long periods where we didn't read at all. As a result, by the time we broke up, we had read 98 of the 100 stories, including a couple during that ambiguous final week after we had broken up but before she moved out. I once thought there was something poetic about coming so close but not quite reaching the finish line. Now I just think it an interesting coincidence.

I've kept my determination not to read any more of the book without reading it aloud to someone first, and that's why after all this discussion, Decameron still isn't on the list of books I've completed.

One of the dilemmas of starting a new relationship is to decide which of one's prior relationship habits can be continued with the new person. On the one hand, it seems terribly crass to simply plug the new girlfriend into the role left vacant by the old one. On the other hand, the activities I enjoyed in a past relationship are plainly a part of who I am and what I like to do, and starting anew with someone else doesn't change that.

It turned out that Ericka also likes being read aloud to (and, unlike Karen, she likes to take her turn reading back to me). As a nice compromise, we decided that we would start our own tradition of reading, but, as much as I wanted to finish up the Decameron, we'd find some other books to read instead.

Our first choice was Voltaire's Candide. In my mind I tend to associate Candide with the Decameron. Even though one is quite short and the other quite long, they have in common that they are both my personal favorites, I know them both in translation, and I love them both for the wit of the writing. (Not having read either in the original language, I can't say whether the wit is an accurate reflection of the original author's or an invention of the translator, but either way I praise the translator.) Another thing they seem to have in common is that they are of the same era, but that's just an illusion. Candide's date of publication (1759) is actually nearer to today than to Decameron's date of publication (c 1370). But viewed from today, they both just seem old.

We started reading Candide in 2004, I think. Certainly it was before our trip to Alaska in January. I remember, because we took the book along to read on the plane ― reading on airplanes is one of our new traditions; that and reading in restaurants ― and I foolishly left it there. It wasn't till some weeks after our return that I got a copy from the library to finish the reading. I'm still bummed that I lost my copy. I love that book. It might be my favorite classic.

10:38:38 PM  [permalink]  comment []