Giovanni Verga
Published: 2016-01-15
Total Pages: 106
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Little Novels of Sicily "Novelle Rusticane" Giovanni Verga translated by D. H. Lawrence Giovanni Verga, the Sicilian novelist and playwright, is surely the greatest writer of Italian fiction, after Manzoni. Verga was born in Catania, Sicily, in 1840, and died in the same city, at the age of eighty-two, in January, 1922. As a young man he left Sicily to work at literature and mingle with society in Florence and Milan, and these two cities, especially the latter, claim a large share of his mature years. He came back, however, to his beloved Sicily, to Catania, the seaport under Etna, to be once more Sicilian of the Sicilians and spend his long declining years in his own place. The first period of his literary activity was taken up with "Society" and elegant love. In this phase he wrote the novels Eros, Eva, Tigre Reale, Il Marito di Elena, real Italian novels of love, intrigue and "elegance": a little tiresome, but with their own depth. His fame, however, rests on his Sicilian works, the two novels: I Malavoglia and Mastro-Don Gesualdo, and the various volumes of short sketches, Vita dei Campi (Cavalleria Rusticana), Novelle Rusticane, and Vagabondaggio, and then the earlier work Storia di Una Capinera, a slight volume of letters between two school-girls, somewhat sentimental and once very popular. The libretto of Cavalleria Rusticana, the well-known opera, was drawn from the first of the sketches in the volume Vita dei Campi. As a man, Verga never courted popularity, any more than his work courts popularity. He kept apart from all publicity, proud in his privacy: so unlike D'Annunzio. Apparently he was never married. Table of Contents His Reverence So Much for the King Don Licciu Papa The Mystery Play Malaria The Orphans Property Story of the Saint Joseph's Ass Blackbread The Gentry