GIOVANNI VERGA (1840-) BY NATHAN HASKELL DOLE NE of the chief representatives of so-called "realistic fiction in Italy is Giovanni Verga, who was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840. His youth was spent in Florence and Milan; and after living a number of years in his native district, he returned to Milan, where he still resides. He has himself acknowledged that his best inspiration has come from the places which he knew as a boy. He has painted the Sicilian peasant with a master hand. The keen jealousy that leads too frequently to the sudden flash of the stiletto; the grinding poverty which is in such contrast to the beauty of the Sicilian landscape; the squalid sordidness that looks with greater sorrow on the death of an ass than the death of wife or child; the pathetic history of the girl who must go to her shame because life offers no aid to the virtuous poor; the father deprived of his son who must serve his time in the army,-all these motives are used by Verga with consummate power. He understands the force of contrast. He has a rapier wit; the laugh, sardonic too often, follows on the heels of pathos. But it is pathos that is most frequently brought into play,-pathos and the tragic. Few of his stories are not tragic. There is no glamour of triumphant virtue. The drama always ends with death and defeat. The best known of Verga's works is the 'Cavalleria Rusticana,' which by reason of Mascagni's genius has become familiar to operagoers all over the world. The story is short; there are no words wasted: for a moment the sky is bright, then the swift tropic storm comes; one blinding flash, and all the ruin is accomplished. Verga's flights are generally short. His longest story-The Malavoglias'— is in reality a welding into one of a number of short stories. But throughout there is the same minute study of the reality,— the hard, gloomy life of the peasant. Verga, in the introduction or proem to one of his Sicilian tales, gives his notion of what fiction should be: "The simple truth of human life," he says, "will always make us thoughtful; will always have the effectiveness of reality, of genuine tears, of the fevers and sensations that have afflicted the flesh. The mysterious processes whereby conflicting passions mingle, develop, and mature, will long constitute the chief fascination in the study of that psychological phenomenon called the plot of a story, and which modern analysis tries to follow with scientific care through the hidden paths of often contradictory complications. We replace the artistic method, to which we owe so many glorious masterpieces, by a differ ent method, more painstaking and more recondite: we willingly sacrifice the effect of the catastrophe, of the psychological result, as it was seen through an almost divine intuition by the great artists of the past; and we employ instead a logical development, inexorably necessary, less unexpected, less dramatic, but not less fateful. We are more modest, if not more humble; but the conquests that we make with our psychological verities will be none the less useful to the art of the future. I have a firm belief that the triumph of the Novel, the completest and most human of all the works of art, will increase until the affinity and cohesion of all its parts will be so perfect that the process of its creation will remain a mystery like the development of human passions themselves. I have a firm belief that the harmony of its forms will be so absolute, the sincerity of its reality so evident, its method and justification so deeply rooted, that the artist's hand will remain absolutely invisible. "Then the romance will seem to portray a real event; and the work of art will apparently have come about by itself, spontaneously springing into birth, and maturing like a natural fact, without any point of contact with its author. It will not have preserved in its living form any stamp of the mind in which it originated, any shade of the eye that beheld it, any trace of the lips that murmured the first words of it as the creative fiat: it will exist by its own reason, by the mere fact that it is as it should be and must be, palpitating with life, and yet as immutable as a bronze statue, the author of which has had the divine courage to eclipse himself, and disappear in his immortal work.» Verga's earlier stories show decidedly the influence of the French school of fiction. His society novels are conventional and rather vapid, with little native power manifested. Such stories as 'Helen's Husband,' or 'Eros,' or 'Royal Tiger,' are no more valuable than the average run of French novels. Some of them are over-sentimental, as for instance the 'Storia di una Capinera.' But his Sicilian stories have an entirely different character. They smack of real life, and take hold of the imagination. The little story here presented as a specimen of Verga's realism may perhaps be regarded as morbid; but at the same time it fulfills to the letter the programme laid down in his literary creed quoted above. The story-teller has completely effaced himself. You forget that you are reading fiction: it seems like a transcript from iife. Its dramatic power is none the less because it is so repressed. Much is left to the imagination; but the effect of the passions here contrasted-love and jealousy-is clearly seen by the desolation that follows, all the more pathetic because of the relationships of the three protagonists. голе г 15299 HOME TRAGEDY ASA ORLANDI was all at sixes and sevens. The young C Countess Bice was in a slow decline. Some attributed the disease to constitutional feebleness; others to some deepseated, disorder. In the large bedroom where the lights were turned low, although all that part of the town was illuminated as if for a festival, the mother, pale as a sheet, was sitting beside the sickbed waiting for the doctor to come. She held in her feverish hand her daughter's thin and glowing hand, and was talking to her in that caressing accent and with that put-on smile wherewith we try to reply to the anxious and scrutinizing look of those who are seriously ill. Melancholy conversations were these, which under a pretended calmness concealed the dread of a fatal discase which was hereditary in the family, and had threatened the countess herself after Bice was born; which brought back the recollection of the hours of anxiety and worry attendant on the infancy of the delicate little girl, and the worry caused by the cruel presentiments which had almost choked down the woman's natural mother-love, and palliated the husband's first steps astray -that husband who had died young of a wasting illness, during which he had suffered for years confined to his easy-chair. Later, another passion had caused the widow to bloom out in fresh youth. She had faded somewhat prematurely, what with the cares of the feeble infant, and of that husband who was the embodiment of a living death: it was a deep and secret affection, a cause of uneasiness and jealousy, mingling itself with all her mundane joys and apparently thriving upon them, and refining them, rendering them more subtile, more intense, like a delicate delight perfuming everything-a festa, a society woman's triumph. Then suddenly this other threatening cloud had arisen — her daughter's illness darkening the bright skies of her happiness, and seeming to spread over the heavy curtains of the sick girl's bed, and to stretch out until it met with those former dark days; her husband's long death struggle; the grave and anxious face of the very same physician who had been in charge of the other case; the tick-tock of the same clock which had marked the hours of death, and now filled the whole chamber, the whole house, with a gloomy presentiment. The words of the mother and of the daughter, though they tried to seem calm and gay, died away like a sigh in the shadow of the infinite vault. Suddenly the electric bell echoed through a long suite of brilliant but deserted rooms. A silent servant walking on his tiptoes preceded the doctor, who was an old family friend, and seemed to be the only calm person, while all the rest were full of anxiety. The countess stood up, unable to hide her nervous agitation. "Good evening my round of calls. I'm a little late to-day. I am just finishing Then when he had He had taken his seat by the bedside. asked to have the shade removed from the lamp, he began his examination of the invalid, holding between his white, fat fingers the girl's colorless, delicate wrist, and asking her the usual questions. The countess replied with a slight tremor of anxiety in her voice; Bice with monosyllables in a feeble tone, keeping her bright restless eyes fixed on the doctor. In the reception-room was heard the subdued sound of the bell several times repeated, announcing other visitors; and the chambermaid entered like a shadow to whisper into the countess's ear the names of the intimate friends who had come to inquire after the young countess. Suddenly the doctor raised his head: "Who is it that just entered the drawing-room?" he asked with a certain vivacity. "Marquis Danei," replied the countess. "The usual medicine for to-night," continued the doctor, as if he had forgotten what he had asked. "We must take notice at what hour the fever begins. Otherwise there is nothing new. We must give time for the cure." But he did not take his fingers off the girl's wrist, and he fixed a scrutinizing look on her. She had closed her eyes. The mother waited anxiously. For a moment her daughter's brilliant eyes looked into hers, and then a sudden flush of color glowed in Bice's face. "For heaven's sake, doctor, for heaven's sake!" exclaimed the countess in a supplicating voice, as she accompanied the doctor into the drawing-room, paying no attention to the friends and relatives who were waiting there chattering in low voices, "how do you think my daughter is this evening? Tell me the truth." 15301 "Nothing new," he replied; "the usual touch of fever, the usual nervous disturbance." But as soon as they had reached a small room on one side, he planted himself directly in front of the countess, and said brusquely: "Your daughter is in love with this Signor Danei." The countess uttered not a word in reply. Only she grew horribly pale, and instinctively put her hand to her heart. "I have been suspecting it for some time," continued the doctor, with a sort of harsh outspokenness. "Now I am sure of it. It makes a complication in her illness which on account of the patient's extreme sensitiveness at this moment might become serious. We must think it over." "He!" That was the first word that escaped from the countess's lips. It seemed to be spoken outside of her. "Yes: her pulse told me so. Has she never shown any sign Have you never suspected anything of the sort?" of it? "Never! Bice is so timid-so- » "Does the Marquis Danei come to the house often? » The poor woman, under the keen penetrating eyes of this man who seemed to have assumed the importance of a judge, stammered, "Y-yes." "We doctors sometimes have the cure of souls," added the doctor with a smile. "Perhaps it was a fortunate thing that he came while I was here." "But all hope is not lost, is it, doctor?-for the love of God!" "No. It depends on circumstances. Good evening." The countess remained a moment in that same room, which was almost dark, wiping with her handkerchief the cold perspiration that stood out on her temples. Then she went back through the drawing-room swiftly, greeting her friends with a nod, and scarcely looking at Danei, who was in a corner among the intimates. « Bice! My daughter! The doctor thinks you are better to-day: did you know it?" "Yes, mama!" replied the girl gently, with that heart-chilling indifference characteristic of those who are very ill. "Some of our friends are here; they came on your account. Would you like to see any of them?" |