The Nights of Straparola

The name of Giovanni Francesco Straparola has been handed down to later ages as the author of the “Piacevoli Notti,” and on no other account, for the reason that he is one of those fortunate men of letters concerning whom next to nothing is known. He writes himself down as “da Caravaggio;” so it may be reasonably assumed that he first saw the light in that town, but no investigator has yet succeeded in indicating the year of his birth, or in bringing to light any circumstances of his life, other than certain facts connected with the authorship and publication of his works. The ground has been closely searched more than once, and in every case the seekers have come back compelled to admit that they have no story to tell or new fact to add to the scanty stock which has been already garnered. Straparola as a personage still remains the shadow he was when La Monnoie summed up the little that was known about him in the preface to the edition, published in 1725, of the French translation of the “Notti.”

He was doubtless baptized by the Christian names given above, but it is scarcely probable that Straparola can ever have been the surname or style of any family in Caravaggio or elsewhere. More likely than not it is an instance of the Italian predilection for nicknaming—a coined word designed to exhibit and perhaps to hold up to ridicule his undue loquacity; just as the familiar names of Masaccio, and Ghirlandaio, and Guercino, were tacked on to their illustrious wearers on account of some personal peculiarity or former calling. Caravaggio is a small town lying near to Crema, and about half way between Cremona and Bergamo. It enjoyed in the Middle Ages some fame as a place of pilgrimage on account of a spring of healing water which gushed forth on a certain occasion when the Virgin Mary manifested herself. Polidoro Caldara and Michael Angelo Caravaggio were amongst its famous men, and of these it keeps the memory, but Straparola is entirely forgotten. Fontanini, in the “Biblioteca dell’ eloquenza Italiana,” does not name him at all. Quadrio, “Storia e ragione d’ogni poesia,” mentions him as the author of the “Piacevoli Notti,” and remarks on his borrowings from Morlini. Tiraboschi, in the index to the “Storia della letteratura Italiana,” does not even give his name, and Crescimbeni concerns himself only with the enigmas which are to be found at the end of the fables. It is indeed a strange freak of chance that such complete oblivion should have fallen over the individuality of a writer so widely read and appreciated.

The first edition of the first part of the “Piacevoli Notti” was published at Venice in 1550, and of the second part in 1553. It would appear that the author must have been alive in 1557, because, at the end of the second part of the edition of that year, there is a paragraph setting forth the fact that the work was printed and issued “ad instanza dell’ autore.” Some time before 1553 he seems to have been stung sharply on account of some charges of plagiarism which were brought against him by certain detractors, for in all the unmutilated editions of the “Notti” published after that date there is to be found a short introduction to the second part, in which he somewhat acrimoniously throws back these accusations, and calls upon all “gratiose et amorevole donne” to accept his explanations thereof, admitting at the same time that these stories are not his own, but a faithful transcript of what he heard told by the ten damsels in their pleasant assembly. La Monnoie, in his preface to the French translation (ed. 1726), maintains that this juggling with words can only be held to be an excuse on his part for having borrowed the subject-matter for his fables and worked it into shape after his own taste. “Il declare qu’il ne se les est jamais attribuées, et se contente du mérite de les avoir fidèlement rapportées d’après les dix damoiselles. Cela, comme tout bon entendeur le comprend, ne signifie autre chose sinon qu’il avoit tiré d’ailleurs la matière de ces Fables, mais qu’il leur avoit donné la forme.”

This contention of La Monnoie seems reasonable enough, but Grimm, in the notes to “Kinder und Hausmärchen,” has fallen into the strange error of treating Straparola’s apology as something grave and seriously meant, and in the same sentence improves on his mistake by asserting that Straparola took all the fairy tales from the mouths of the ten ladies. “Von jenem Schmutz sind die Märchen ziemlich frei, wie sie ohnehin den besten Theil des ganzen Werkes ausmachen. Straparola hat sie, wie es in der Vorrede zum zweiten Bande (vor der sechsten Nacht) heisst, aus dem Munde zehn junger Fräulein aufgenommen und ausdrücklich erklärt, dass sie nicht sein Eigenthum seien.”