«Quella lucerna tenebrosamente chiara»: i «succhi salutari della medicina» e l’«acque inutile delle muse»

No one better than the «virtuoso camaleonte» Francesco Pona, «nella dottrina profondo, nel servigio degli infermi sollecito, […] di varie scienze asperso», who in real life was a doctor, could have explored the theme of the healing powers of narrative. He himself stated it in Sera terza of his Lucerna when, disguised as Eureta Misoscolo, he expressed the desire to write a dialogue, but to write it as «a doctor» would do. In order to do this, Pona chose to put women at the centre of his works – I am referring to Messalina or Galeria delle donne celebri. These women are protagonists, recipients and, just like in Lucerna, “narrators”. The female characters in Pona’s works are usually the personification of lust and cruelty, but with important exceptions: I am referring to the character of Pistofila in Lucerna, an example of faith and married love, modelled after Lisabetta in Decameron; even more remarkable is the character of Pelagia, the courtesan who converts and becomes a saint in Antilucerna. The narrative materials that Pona merges in his works are partly autobiographical and partly taken from the news, but above all we can see the presence of models of well-known historical and literary works, among which Decameron stands out. The connection with this text had already been noticed in another work by Pona, Il primo d’Agosto celebrato da alcune giovani ad una fonte, which had been compared to one of the “finest Boccaccian days”.