Open access. © 2018 Giorgio Ficara, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110419306-015 Giorgio Ficara The Perfect Woman in Boccaccio and Petrarch Every form, every poem falls apart when separated from its ideas and, conversely, ‘idea,’ in one of its primitive acceptations, means precisely form and poem. Let us now read the youthful verses of a writer who, with his conception of humanity and nature, would change the very institutions of writing: Intorn’ ad una fonte, in un pratello di verdi erbette pieno e di bei fiori, sedean tre angiolette, i loro amori forse narrando, ed a ciascuna ’l bello viso adombrava un verde ramicello ch’i capei d’or cingea, al qual di fuori e dentro insieme i dua vaghi colori avvolgea un suave venticello. E dopo alquanto l’una alle due disse (com’io udi’): “Deh, se per avventura di ciascuna l’amante or qui venisse, fuggiremo noi quinci per paura?”. A cui le due risposer: “Chi fuggisse, poco savia saria, con tal ventura!” (I) [Beside a fountain in a little grove That fresh green fronds and pretty flowers did grace, Three maidens sat and talked methinks of love. Mid golden locks, o’ershadowing each sweet face, For coolness was entwined a leaf-green spray, And all the while a gentle zephyr played Through green and golden in a tender way, Weaving a web of sunshine and of shade. After a while, unto the other two One spoke, and I could hear her words: “Think you That if our lovers were to happen by We would all run away for very fright?” The others answered her: “From such delight She were a little fool who’d wish to fly!”] 1 1 Giovanni Boccaccio: Rime. Edited by Vittore Branca. In: Tutte le opere di G. Boccaccio. Edited by Vittore Branca. 10 vols. Milan: Mondadori 1992, vol. V, 1, p. 33; trans. in: An Anthology of Italian Poems. 13th–19th Century. Selected and Translated by Lorna de’ Lucchi. New York: Biblo and Tannen 1967, p. 93.