Sicilian Stories
Novelle siciliane
A Dual-Language Book
Giovanni Verga
Edited and Translated by
STANLEY APPELBAUM
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
Mineola, New York
Copyright
Translations, Introduction, and footnotes copyright © 2002 by Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Bibliographical Note
This Dover edition, first published in 2002, contains the full Italian text of twelve stories by Giovanni Verga (see Introduction for bibliographic details), reprinted from a standard edition, plus new translations of each by Stanley Appelbaum, who also made the selection, wrote the Introduction, and supplied the footnotes.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Verga, Giovanni, 1840–1922.
Sicilian stories/Novelle siciliane : a dual-language book / Giovanni Verga ; edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum.
p. cm.
Stories taken from his Vita dei campi and Novelle rusticane.
Contains the full Italian text with English translation.
ISBN 0-486-41945-2 (pbk.)
1. Verga, Giovanni, 1840–1922—Translations into English. I. Title: Novelle siciliane. II. Appelbaum, Stanley. III. Title.
PQ4734.V5 A22 2001
853′.8—dc21
2001042396
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
41945203
www.doverpublications.com
Contents
Introduction
Nedda / Nedda
From Vita dei campi (Rural Life)
Fantasticheria / Reverie
Jeli il pastore / Jeli the Herdsman
Rosso Malpelo / Nasty Redhead
Cavalleria rusticana / Rustic Chivalry
La Lupa / The She-wolf
L’amante di Gramigna / Gramigna’s Mistress
From Novelle rusticane (Rustic Stories)
Malaria / Pestilential Air
La roba / Possessions
Storia dell’asino di S. Giuseppe / The History of St. Joseph’s Donkey
Pane nero / Dark Bread
Libertà / Liberty
INTRODUCTION
Giovanni Verga: Life and Work
The family background of the man who has been called the greatest Italian short-story writer between Boccaccio and the 20th century was one of well-to-do comfort, with homes both in Catania (on the east coast of Sicily, just south of Mount Etna, it is the island’s second largest city, after Palermo) and in the countryside, where the Vergas possessed estates. Far from being grasping conservatives, however, the Vergas were liberal in politics and aspired toward the unification of Italy long before the actual event, which occurred during Giovanni’s lifetime. (Until he was twenty, Sicily was part of the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples, or “Two Sicilies.”)
Giovanni Verga was born in 1840, either in Catania (the “big city” of his Sicilian stories) or in Vizzini, a small town in the Iblei hills about thirty miles southwest of Catania, where he vacationed frequently as a child and teenager; Vizzini is the setting, whether named or not, of some of his most famous stories. Verga’s talent for writing was in evidence from his youth; by 1856 he had begun a novel (unpublished) about the American Revolution. His vocation as a writer quickly cut short his law-school days (1858). The year 1860 was of great significance to Sicily (conquest by Garibaldi and annexation to the Kingdom of Piedmont, which championed the unification of Italy) and to Verga personally, who became involved in the publication of periodicals and who published his novel I Carbonari della montagna (The Carbonari1 of the Mountain). From 1860 to 1864 Verga served in the National Guard.
In 1865 Verga first ventured north, to the more cosmopolitan and progressive areas of Italy, spending two months in Florence, which had just become the capital of the country (after Turin, in Piedmont). Besides working on novels, his favorite literary medium, he began trying his hand at plays in that year, though it would be nearly two decades before he really made a name for himself in the theater. From 1869 to 1871 he lived mainly in Florence, where he became part of the foremost literary circles, and continued to write novels and plays. In 1870, the year in which Rome was won for the Italian nation (it became the capital in 1871), Verga published in magazine installments the novel that first won him fame and income, Storia di una capinera (The History of a Blackcap [a species of bird]), about a girl who goes mad after her sweetheart marries her wealthier stepsister.
In 1872 Verga made his important move to Milan, which was to be his main base of operations until 1885 (or even until 1893, according to some chroniclers). At the time, Milan was at the cutting edge of Italian intellectual life, the home of the Second Romantic Movement and of Scapigliatura (“dissolute ways,” a movement in arts and letters that championed realism and naturalism as already practiced in France and elsewhere). In Milan, where he associated with writers of the stature of Arrigo Boito and composers of the stature of Giuseppe Verdi, his output of novels continued. His novels up to 1875 tend to be passionate love stories, often involving artists and writers moving in high society in northern Italy.
The 1874 short story “Nedda,” in which Verga nostalgically returned to Sicilian themes, with an amazing ability to recall the slightest, most telling details of the rural life he had observed as a well-to-do youngster, is universally considered to be the great breakthrough work that set his career in a new, and ultimately its most significant, direction. (Like the other stories included in this Dover volume, it is discussed in greater detail later in this Introduction.) However, he was slow to follow up that lead. His next novel, Eros, published in 1875, was in his earlier Milanese vein (translated into German the following year, it first made him known outside Italy). Before 1875 was over, though, he had begun sketches for a Sicilian novel.
Meanwhile, “Nedda” had made Verga more amenable to short-story writing (he hadn’t favored that form), which was, among other things, a quicker way to earn money than novel writing. Over the next two decades, he wrote dozens of stories for newspapers and magazines, most of which he would periodically gather into volumes, usually retouching or rewriting them. His first such volume, with no Sicilian story, was the 1876 Primavera e altri racconti (Spring, and Other Stories; “Nedda,” though out of place there, was added to the second edition of Primavera in 1877).
Between 1878 and 1880 Verga published in newspapers and magazines the eight Sicilian stories that were collected in the 1880 volume Vita dei campi (Rural Life), six of which are included in this Dover edition (the last two in the 1880 volume were “Guerra di Santi” [War of Saints] and “Pentolaccia”; a story of a different type was arbitrarily included by the publisher in the second edition of 1881, and in later editions the stories were further revised—to their detriment, it is generally thought—and placed in a new, less cogent sequence).
Also in 1880, Verga met again, after a ten-year separation, the writer Giselda Fojanesi, who was by then the wife of the writer Mario Rapisardi, an old school friend of Verga’s who had helped introduce him to Florentine society. This didn’t prevent Verga from beginning a three-year relationship with her (a confirmed bachelor, he was no celibate), which may be reflected in the story “Di là del mare” (Beyond the Sea) that concludes the volume Novelle rusticane (see below).
In 1881 Verga finally published the Sicilian novel he had been working on for at least six years: I Malavoglia (a family name; the book is generally known in English as The House by the Medlar Tree), which many critics consider his masterpiece (see the discussion of the story “Fantasticheria,” below). Luchino Visconti’s Neorealist film of 1948, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), is based
on I Malavoglia.
In 1882, the publication year of another non-Sicilian, “modern,” psychological novel, Verga visited his spiritual mentor Emile Zola at his retreat in Médan (near Versailles), and made a trip to London.
In 1883, Verga published two volumes of short stories, the poor-people-of-Milan collection, Per le vie (On the Streets), and the second Sicilian collection, Novelle rusticane (Rustic Stories). Novelle rusticane, consisting of twelve stories, all or most of which had been published in periodicals between 1880 and 1882, is considered to contain his best short-story work, along with Vita dei campi; five pieces from Novelle rusticane are included in this Dover volume. (The others are: “Il Reverendo” [The Reverend], “Cos’è il Re” [What Is the King], “Don Licciu Papa,” “Il mistero” [The Mystery], “Gli orfani” [The Orphans], “I galantuomini” [The Gentry], and the above-mentioned “Di là del mare.”)
Also in 1883, Verga wrote his best and most successful play, Cavalleria rusticana, based on his story of the same name in Vita dei campi. It was first performed in 1884; in the later course of that year Verga visited London and Paris.
After 1885, Verga lived chiefly in Sicily, making many trips to Rome and continuing to write extensively, although his later works, with one enormous exception, are not as highly regarded as Vita dei campi, I Malavoglia, and Novelle rusticane. That exception is his second Sicilian novel, which some critics call his very best effort, Mastro-don Gesualdo (prefigured in the 1880 story “La roba” [see below]), published in installments in 1888 and in book form in 1889.
In the 1887 short-story volume Vagabondaggio (Roaming), only the title story is Sicilian. Verga’s last two short-story collections were I ricordi del Capitano d‘Arce (The Reminiscences of Captain d‘Arce), 1891, and Don Candeloro e C.i (Don Candeloro and His Company; about provincial strolling players), 1894.
In 1889 Verga entered into a relationship, which would last the rest of his life, with the pianist Dina Castellazzi di Sordevolo. In 1895 he wrote a play version of the story “La Lupa” from Vita dei campi; it was performed in 1896. His writing continued at a slower rate; he spent a lot of his time revising his earlier works for new editions, which discerning critics don’t prize as highly as the original versions. Between 1912 and 1919 he was involved in screenwriting and film production, especially cinematic versions of his own stories and novels.
In 1920 he received great honors on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, and he was made an Italian senator. He died of thrombosis in 1922 at his ancestral home in Catania. Both in his lifetime and afterward, his reputation had its ups and downs. His greatest achievements as a writer—both his concern for the lowly and downtrodden, and the colloquial, unrhetorical style of his best Sicilian stories—were not always appreciated in his lifetime, but the critical tide turned in his favor in the 1920s, and at the present time it seems safe to say that he is an imperishable classic in Italy, if still not universally recognized elsewhere.
The Sicilian Stories: General Remarks
Generally considered Verga’s best work, along with his two Sicilian novels, are “Nedda” (1874, Brigola, Milan) and the stories in the two volumes Vita dei campi (Rural Life; published in 1880 by Emilio Treves, Milan) and Novelle rusticane (Rustic Stories; published at the end of 1882, dated 1883, by Felice Casanova, Turin). These stories typify Verga’s verismo (true-to-life) style, based on French realists such as Flaubert and naturalists such as Zola, and championed in Italy by Verga’s Sicilian friend, the writer Luigi Capuana.
During the decades after the first book publications (themselves revisions of the very-first periodical publications), Verga undertook further rewriting, and changed the contents of the volumes by adding or removing stories and by altering their sequence within the volumes. This Dover edition preserves the text of the first book publications, and presents twelve stories (“Nedda,” six from Vita dei Campi, and five from Novelle rusticane) in their original sequence (details below). Each of at least four of the stories included here has been singled out by various critics as Verga’s best single story.
Generally speaking, the Vita dei campi stories present their characters unpolemically as part of an almost mythically unchanging natural and social environment, whereas the Novelle rusticane stories contain more unveiled social protest, and reflect their specific era, during which the bourgeoisie was being enriched at the expense of the nobility and the clergy, while the peasantry remained exploited. Additional major themes, as throughout Verga’s entire oeuvre, are love and solitude.
These stories present an entire sociology and ethnography of the time and place concerned. Verga’s Sicily is not the whole island, but an area within a 30-mile radius north, west, and particularly south-southwest of Catania. The time is more or less the time of writing, or shortly before. Unobtrusively, but skillfully, the stories reveal the social classes, a wide variety of occupations, home life, popular amusements, religion and superstitions—the entire life of the people down to their characteristic sayings and gestures. A strong feeling of fatalism emerges, which the author appears to share (his two Sicilian novels were intended to be parts of a large cycle to be called I Vinti (Those Defeated by Life).
Unlike many sentimentalizing 19th-century depictors of village life, Verga doesn’t paint an idyllic picture. The landscape has its own beauties, but it is a hard one to live in. Ignorance and envy are almost institutionalized. Of course, Verga does indicate that poverty is to blame for many individual or societal character defects; and he is fair enough to point out occasionally that even the gentry can suffer and become impoverished. (The “gentry,” galantuomini, of his stories are usually small or middle-range landowners, not the immensely wealthy and powerful owners of huge “latifundia.”)
Verga’s style in the Sicilian stories, in many ways a contrast to his earlier “Milanese” approach, is plain and straightforward, largely avoiding active participation by the author as an all-knowing figure who feels free to address the reader directly. He makes much use of the technique of reporting his characters’ thoughts and plans in their own personal phraseology and diction even when he isn’t using dialogue (direct discourse). He employs very little actual Sicilian dialect, but his standard Italian frequently contains thoughts, proverbs, and turns of phrase that are translated or adapted from Sicilian. There are numerous rare and unusual words, and uncommon spellings of common words. All of these demands on the reader are worth the trouble, though, because the material is so rich and rewarding.
The Sicilian stories constantly use certain terminology (sometimes in a standard Italian form, sometimes in Sicilian) that calls for clarification:
Forms of Address. To retain the flavor of the original, the English translation herein uses equivalents or near-equivalents in English of certain courtesy titles that precede people’s baptismal names. Compare, literally “godfather,” commonly prefixed to names of rural men, is rendered as “neighbor” in this volume; the feminine equivalent is comare. Zio (“uncle”), a term of respect for older rural men, is rendered as “‘Uncle.’” (Feminine: zia.) Gnà, which some scholars have seen as derived from signora and others from donna, is used when addressing rural women; its English equivalent here is “Mis’,” the American rural form of “Mrs.” or “Miss.” Massaro, literally “tenant farmer” or “smallholder,” is rendered (when a title) as “farmer.” Curatolo is rendered literally as “sheep farmer,” or just “farmer.” Mastro, a term applied to artisans and skilled workmen, is rendered as “Master.” Don, a courtesy title for men of the gentry, or at least well-to-do men, is now familiar to Americans and is left unchanged; its feminine form is donna. The title character of Verga’s second great Sicilian novel, Mastro-don Gesualdo, is so termed because he has ascended from the artisan class to the gentry (among whom he is extremely unhappy: an example of the people who have unwisely broken with “their own kind,” as mentioned at the end of the story “Fantasticheria”). On the subject of forms of address, the reader of the Italian texts should pay very clos
e attention to the social and psychological underpinnings of the use of the familiar tu and the polite voi for “you”; this couldn’t be rendered in the English, but is an important feature of the stories.
Money. For the sake of historical precision, all terms designating specific sums of money, and weights and measures, have been left in their Italian forms in the translation. The basic unit of currency is the lira, which was worth about 20 cents (U.S.) at the time. The lira is divided into a hundred centesimi. A tarì was worth 42½ centesimi; a carlino, 25 centesimi; a soldo, 5 centesimi; a grano, 2½ centesimi. An onza (or oncia) was worth 12¾ lire. The terms baiocco and quattrino refer to very small denominations, and aren’t used specifically (thus they are translated into equivalent English expressions).
Weights and Measures. A cafiso was about 6 pounds, but it varied according to place and time. A quintale equals 100 kilograms (about 220 pounds). A rotolo was about 800 grams (about 1¾ pounds). The cereal measure tumolo varied in nature, but was about 15 pounds.
The Individual Stories in This Volume
“Nedda.” This breakthrough work in Verga’s career, which led him to concentrate on the short-story form and on Sicilian subject matter, is said to have been written in Florence in three days’ time during a period of discouragement when Verga was thinking of returning home for good. It was first published in Milan in the June 15, 1874 issue of the Rivista italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti. Later that year it was published in book form, as an offprint from the magazine, by Brigola in Milan, with the subtitle “Bozzetto siciliano” (Sicilian Sketch).
The prologue (first paragraph) reflects the author’s actual situation as a Sicilian far from home who is recalling his native soil after some time away. It also provides a sample of Verga’s “fancy” style when he isn’t treating rural subject matter in colloquial terms.
The names of the two main characters are typical Sicilian nicknames derived from the stressed syllables of their full baptismal names. Nedda is short for Bastianedda, which would be (Se)bastianella in standard Italian (Sicilian dd equals Italian ll). Janu would be Sebastiano in its full Italian form (with Sicilian u for Italian o).
Sicilian Stories Page 1
