top 3 moments of the letters exchange between Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio that will never leave my mind:
that one letter (Epistulae, XV) in which Boccaccio tells Petrarca about how he was going to visit him in Venice, but by the time he was halfway there Petrarca had left the city for work, so he was indecisive on what to do, until he fortuitously met Petrarca's son-in-law on the road, so they continued their travel together. Once in Venice, Boccaccio met Petrarca's daughter and her children, and when Petrarca's little granddaughter came forward to greet the guest, Boccaccio got confused for a moment and instinctively picked her up, mistaking her for his own daughter, who passed away as a child some years prior, because they looked too similar. I never knew how the letter continues because everytime I get to that point I just stare into the void and then turn off the pc.
the one (Seniles III, 2) in which a frightened Petrarca scolds Boccaccio for not having written to him to make him know if he's well and alive, as another plague wave had been hitting Italy and Boccaccio hadn't been replying to his letters. If he was dead, then he's justified and may he rest well forever, but if he was alive, then he had no excuse in his eyes.
Petrarca's last letter of the Seniles (XVII, 4), directed to Boccaccio, in which he discusses his latin translation of one of Boccaccio's famous novels (Decameron, X, 10), saying that "his love for him" brought him to write in his old age things he wouldn't have written when young, and that he was doing it for "his Giovanni". His translation, and the following comment, constitutes the final piece of the tapestry of his own life Petrarca has patiently woven, composed of around 600 carefully selected, revised and edited letters. That's what he selected to be the last things for us to read, and how everything ends, one year before the author's death. The last text of his life we're able to surely track down.
Bonus mention: Petrarca pleading Boccaccio, anxious and shaken by a religious crisis, to move to his house, and saying that he was willing to buy every single one of his books as long as he could keep them together with his in one place, hoping they could then be passed down in time like that, together (Seniles I, 5).
