L'Italo-Americano

W hen Gio- v a n n i V e r g a f a m o u s n o v e l o f peasant life I Malavoglia was released in Milan 140 years ago by Treves publish- ing house, critics gave the work a very cold reception. It was a commercial failure due to both new contents a n d n a r r a t i v e f o r m s t h a t were considered too innova- tive for the bourgeois read- ers of the time. In 1881, I Malavoglia (in English, The House by the Medlar Tree) was too experi- mental, too radical, clearly revolutionary. Yet for many decades now, the authentic masterpiece of Italian litera- ture has become required r e a d i n g f o r e v e r y I t a l i a n high school student and has had a transportive effect on generation after generation o f r e a d e r s . A n d n o t o n l y Italian readers. I Malavoglia is also trea- s u r e d b y I t a l i a n - Americans, especially if they are of Sicilian descent. T h e V e r g a n o v e l i s a reminder of their root cul- ture; it reconnects with their h e r i t a g e . I t f o r m s a n d reforms their cultural and spiritual identities. G i o v a n n i V e r g a ( 1 8 4 0 - 1922) was a modern intellec- tual from Catania, a lively S i c i l i a n c i t y e v e n i n t h e 1800s. At the beginning of his career, he left his home- land to be a novelist, short s t o r i e s w r i t e r , a n d p l a y - wright and to mingle with society, at first in Florence, w h e r e h e w r o t e S t o r i a d i una Capinera (Story of a B l a c k c a p ) , a n e p i s t o l a r y novel that tells about Maria, a girl forced by her family to become a nun and forsake her secret love for a young man. This is also the story behind Franco Zeffirelli's film Sparrow (1993). In 1872, after gaining a r e p u t a t i o n a s a w r i t e r , Giovanni Verga decided to move to Milan, the pre-emi- nent publishing city in the country. There, he came in contact with members of the avant-garde movement La Scapigliatura (Milanese bohemianism) who intro- duced him to philosophical and literary movements such a s P o s i t i v i s m a n d Naturalism, whose theories had a big impact on Milan intelligentsia. The Sicilian writer believed in science and progress like the French n o v e l i s t E m i l e Z o l a . B u t Verga's poetics took a step further. The lower classes are the only voices that mat- ter in his stories. They are depicted objectively, with uncanny accuracy, as reflect- ed in a mirror. Verga's criti- cal realism, which was called V e r i s m o , a i m e d a l s o a t brevity, an intense abrupt- n e s s s t r i v i n g o f a b s o l u t e impersonality. His literary movement Verismo peaked between the late 1870s and the early 1900s. V e r g a d e b u t e d a s a V e r i s t a w r i t e r i n 1 7 7 8 through the novella or short story Rosso Malpelo. Three years later, in 1881, he wrote the I Malavoglia. Through his masterpiece, he docu- mented the harsh lives of the Sicilian poor. He returned to his native land, Catania, in 1894, five years after the release of his second Verista novel Mastro Don Gesualdo. The seaport under the fiery Mount Etna inspired him to write some other impressive works. He lived in Catania until he died in 1922, aged 82. The bulk of I Malavoglia takes place in Aci Trezza, a fishing village near Catania located on the coast of the Ionian Sea. The action spans 15 years between 1863 --two years after Italy's unifica- tion—and 1878. Verga con- s t r u c t s a m i c r o c o s m i n which locals and a very few greedy newcomers interact with each other. The setting is restricted, closed off to the world. But above all, the novel depicts the tragic decline of a Sicilian family of fisherfolk, the family Toscano, who are living through a period of political change following the region's annexation to Italy. Honest and resilient, their downfall symbolizes the end of a pre-capitalistic society. T h e f a m i l y p a t r i a r c h , Padron 'Ntoni, is portrayed a s a m y t h i c a l f i g u r e w h o embodies traditional values. The family members do not question the traditional wis- dom they have inherited. All, e x c e p t o n e : t h e y o u n g 'Ntoni, the oldest grandson, who is fickle and impatient, a rebel "infected" by moder- nity, a factor that will deter- mine a "dysfunction" within the family itself. Although extremely hard- working, the Toscano family h a s b e e n d u b b e d " I Malavoglia" (men of Ill-will) by antiphrasis, or saying the opposite of what is meant in such a way it is obvious. The term "Malavoglia" is what the Sicilians call a 'nciùria, a nickname. "Once they were good and brave seafaring folk, quite the opposite of what they might appear to be from their nickname of the Ill-wills, as is but right," tells the narrator in the pref- ace of the novel. A 'nciuria could also refer to a person's physical or psy- chological characteristics. For example in the novel, a c h a r a c t e r i s n i c k n a m e d Zuppiddo because he is dis- a b l e d i n t h e l e g s , w h i l e Mara, the patriarch's daugh- t e r - i n - l a w , i s i r o n i c a l l y k n o w n a s L a L o n g a ( T h e T a l l ) b e c a u s e s h e i s v e r y short. The Malavoglia family is large and extended. "They had always had boats on the water and tiles in the sun." They owned a boat called Provvidenza (Providence) a n d a h o m e k n o w n a s L a C a s a d e l N e s p o l o o r t h e House by the Medlar Tree. But then came the day when they lost everything except the struggle for existence that Verga depicts with stark honesty. The heart of their family's philosophy is unity. "To pull MARIELLA RADAELLI LIFE PEOPLE PLACES HERITAGE The port of Aci Trezza (Photo: Marco Guidi/Dreamstime) I Malavoglia: gripping tale evokes Sicilian Americans' ancestral land Continued to page 30 THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2021 www.italoamericano.org 28 L'Italo-Americano

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