[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE OF THE "DECAMERON." (VENICE, 1492)]
There follows the _Amorosa Visione_, which was almost certainly begun immediately after the _Ameto_; at any rate, all modern authorities are agreed that it was written between 1341 and 1344. It recalls the happier time of his love, and Fiammetta is the very soul of the poem. Written in _terza rima_, not its only likeness to the _Divine Comedy_, it is dedicated to Maria d'Aquino (Fiammetta) in an acrostic, which is solved by reading the initial letters of the first verse of each _terzina_; the result being two sonnets and a ballata.[276] The name of "Madonna Maria" is formed by the initials of the twelfth to the twenty-second _terzine_ of chapter x, and the name "Fiamma" by those of the twenty-fifth to the thirty-first of chapter xiii. Here is no allegory at all, but a clear statement; the three last lines of the first sonnet reading:--
"Cara Fiamma, per cui 'l core ò caldo, Que' che vi manda questa Visione Giovanni è di Boccaccio da Certaldo."
As the title proclaims, the poem is a Vision--a vision which Love discovers to the poet-lover. While he is falling asleep a lady appears to him who is to be his guide. He follows her in a dream, and together they come to a noble _castello_; there by a steep stairway they enter into the promised land, as it were, of Happiness, choosing not the wearying road of Good to the left, but passing through a wide portal into a spacious room on the right, whence come delicious sounds of _festa_. Two youths, one dressed in white, the other in red, after disputing with his guide, lead him into the _festa_, where he sees four triumphs--of Wisdom, of Fame, of Love, and of Fortune. In the triumph of Wisdom he sees all the learned men, philosophers, and poets of the world, among them Homer, Virgil, and Cicero, Horace, Sallust, Livy, Galen, Cato, Apuleius, Claudian, Martial, and Dante.[277] In the triumph of Fame he sees all the famous heroes and heroines of Antiquity and the Middle Age, among them Saturn, Electra, Baal, Paris, Absalom, Hecuba, Brutus, Jason, Medea, Hannibal, Cleopatra, Cornelia, Giulia, and Solomon, Charlemagne, Charles of Apulia, and Corradino.[278] The uniformity of the descriptions is pleasantly interrupted by certain apparitions, among them Robert of Naples[279] and Boccaccino,[280] besides a host of priests.[281] Once in speaking of the sufferings of poverty he seems to be writing of his own experiences:--