Podcasts

 The Daily Decameron

Tales to Connect us in Troubled Times

Giovanni Boccaccio began writing The Decameron in 1349 as the bubonic plague was devastating Europe. Where science and medicine failed, Boccaccio knew that art and words could have the power to heal. His prescription was simple: seek refuge with loved ones and share stories, music, dance and diversions to keep your spirits up. In The Decameron, he imagines ten young Florentines who flee the city and “shelter in place” in a villa in the Tuscan countryside, where they tell each other their favorite tales—ten a night for ten nights.

In the spring of 2020, as the pandemic drove us all into lockdown, fear, and sadness, my friend Franca Cavallaro and I started talking about Boccaccio and thinking about how we might create a podcast to share his words and his wisdom with a troubled world.

I thought of securing the rights to an English translation, but as I looked at several—even the good ones—I felt uneasy about using any of them. Boccaccio, was inventing the rules of fiction and prose storytelling in the vernacular. Yes, that was a ground-breaking feat of creativity, but I was surprised to realize, years after dutifully studying his classic as an undergraduate, that alongside all that invention, there’s a lot of less-than-successful trial and error. Boccaccio, a man of many appetites, often allowed himself to get a bit drunk on words. And while his long, often repetitive formulations might work in 14th-Century Italian, much of his writing just doesn’t translate into deliciously readable modern English, no matter who’s trying.

I decided I’d kill two birds (copyright and concision) with one stone and translate the ten chosen tales myself. But “translate” turned out to be the wrong word for the process. Reading a loopy, wordy translation on a page at your own speed is one thing, but this was going to be an audio program for people real-time listening. So, I thought I’d try a bit of trans-adapting, tightening and trimming—at first words and phrases, then sentences, paragraphs, and sometimes even pages—to make something listenable and engaging that I hoped would preserve, or maybe even revive, the spirit of Boccaccio, his tales, and his vividly rendered characters.

I love the work of translation, but I often find it painful. It’s never easy—and sometimes not even possible—to render a sentence in a way that captures not just the sense, but also the effect, feeling, the tone and the attitude you think the original was meant to convey. But this was different. Once I gave myself permission to do a bit of freestyling, I felt a giddy sense of liberation and even a feeling of kinship. It was like I was getting to know Boccaccio the writer and Giovanni the guy—hanging out with them, getting a sense of their souls, and trying to channel how they might tell a tale in our language. And then it occurred to me: this is exactly how I’ve worked with so many chefs and authors on ghostwriting projects.

I had a lot of fun making these episodes and narrating them, and I’m proud of how they turned out. But the thing I’m most proud of is actually the thing most people are the least aware of. It’s the ghostwriting: the work—really, the play—of rendering Boccaccio’s world in words that speak to us, here, now, today.

Role: Co-producer, Translator, Writer, Narrator
Presenting sponsor: The Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, Annamaria Di Giorgio, Director
Co-Producer: Franca Cavallaro
Editor: Enrica Cavalli
Music: Jon Sayles