Page 12 - SUMMARIES OF GIOVANNI BOCCACCIO’S DECAMEON : A Visionary Journey In 100 Stories And 100 Etchings By Petru Russu

a sort of poetic latitude, from a distance he assumes in front of deserves consideration from anyone who wants to approach this
the narration of the facts. It is, at most, the same exoticism used text. It is important to feel pushed to a certain attitude, as Rusu
by Boccaccio when he imagined Saladin traveling around the did exhaustively dealing with the “Decameron” universe.

Christian world, around Lombardy, to test the hospitality and the
magnanimity of the same people he wanted to fight.
In Petru Russu’s artwork the imaginary seems to develop with
an accent of visionary expressionism rather dramatic, arousing,
An admiration and wonder that has nothing to do with the tendency excited. This particular artistic attitude tests the reality through

to indulge in detailed descriptions. It is this exoticism. An exoticism the upcoming of a symbolic-oneiric awareness and in a sharpening
that Petru Russu seems to bend into science fiction, populated that could even change into a scream. It is a painting of profound,

by characters that look like ancient Egyptians or Chinese princes psychic investigation. A violent confession of anguish. Russu’s is
dressed in hundreds of jade stones, like the ones discovered by crowded by presences, which bring dramatically back the reality
archaeologists. to a truth of archetypes, that the artist put in contrast with the

leveling of the daily horizon.

Boccaccio will not be angry at such an interpretation. He himself,
while writing about Dante, used to wonder if his illustrious master In this engraving work, this visionary attitude is more accentuated

might have been angry up above. Boccaccio will not be angry by a narrative easing. It loosens the dramatic tension. It gains
because he himself took a lot of freedom regarding the epic matter the pleasure of a pure dreaming-about. It becomes lighter, ironic,
he utilized. It was the freedom of a superior distance. Boccaccio motioning. The plot moves towards dimensions of pure imagination,

was the first author capable of dominating the most different as it happens in the exercises of a machine that belongs to the
subjects, both from a social-historical and popular-dialectal point world of fantasy.
of view, with that distance that belongs to the artistic discipline.

I think that this example is very important not only for those
The characters come alive in a metamorphic dimension. They cross
who create illustrations for books, but also for those artists who
each other into fantastic spaces. They are free from every logic,
confront themselves with this gigantic masterpiece’s provocation.
apart from the one based on the necessity of their narrative plot.
The same narrative plot that Petru Russu’s fantasy has developed
Boccaccio dominates the subject. He reconsiders the epic plot and in a game of possible analogies with the text.
at the same time, frames it inside the rigorous structure of the

“Decameron,” within sentences where the liveliness of the quip and
Petru Russu’s figurative tales are not descriptive. They are only
the dialectal allusion obey the discipline of a rhythm. A rhythm,
in connection with the text for a pure, fantastic solicitation that
distinguished by participles with a Latin flavor, and by everything
the artist renews time after time. The text is a sort of pretest to
that recalls the rules, the refined modalities of creating a phrase
stimulate his own taste, his own genius for a narrative plot derived
with nobility, as is in the tradition of ancient rhetoric. This mixture
from his pure, fantastic, visionary world, in witch emerges symbolic
of promiscuous vividness that forms Boccaccio’s subject and, at
presences, archetypal and mysterious.
the same time, high artistic discipline, seems to me a theme that

DECAMERON 10