I Malavoglia
A drawing of Giovanni Verga
CONTENTS
Title
The Translator
Introduction
Cast of Characters
Author’s Preface
1. Chapter I
2. Chapter II
3. Chapter III
4. Chapter IV
5. Chapter V
6. Chapter VI
7. Chapter VII
8. Chapter VIII
9. Chapter IX
10. Chapter X
11. Chapter XI
12. Chapter XII
13. Chapter XIII
14. Chapter XIV
15. Chapter XV
In Search of Verga
Chronology
Copyright
The Translator
Judith Landry was educated at Somerville College, Oxford where she obtained a first class honours degree in Italian and French. She combines a career as a translator of fiction, art and architecture with part-time teaching at the Courtauld Institute, London.
Her translations include The Devil in Love by Jacques Cazotte, Smarra and Trilby by Charles Nodier and The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague by Sylvie Germain.
Luigi Capuana, the novelist and critic, hailed “I MALAVOGLIA” as the arrival of the modern novel in Italy. The rest of the critics and the Italian reading public disliked Italy’s first modern novel intensely. It was set in the back of beyond, Sicily, and was about illiterate fishermen, written in a style totally at odds with the literary style fashioned by Manzoni. It had nothing to recommend it to the bourgeoisie of the cities and was soon forgotten. The publication of Mastro Don Gesualdo and Verga’s play, “Cavalleria Rusticana”, established Verga’s reputation and fortune in Italy. By the time of his death he was the great old man of Italian letters, his reputation now based on the once despised, “I Malavoglia”.
The preoccupation with heredity and fatalism given to Victorian society by the advent of Darwinism, the arrival of the modern world of railways, telegraphs, taxation and revolution in an enclosed, and hitherto cut off society, with the originality of the style and content makes “I Malavoglia” a powerful literary work, but any critic who dwells on these features misses the essential strength of the novel; its over-whelming emotional content. This is a book which brings the tears gushing into the eyes as the reader is drawn into the Homeric world of Aci Trezza. The elements, combine with Fate and the hubris of young ’Ntoni to bring about the down-fall of the noble Malavoglia family. Padron ’Ntoni is a hero fit for a Greek tragedy, who fights nobly against insuperable odds to keep his family afloat, only to see everything he believes in submerged as he dies in a hospital bed.
Even today the epic qualities of ‘I Malavoglia” haunt the imagination of the reader, while the modernity of the novel has but passing interest. What Verga intended as a sincere and dispassionate study of society will live forever as a lyrical testimony to the indomitable spirit of the individual engaged in a fight he cannot win.
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The novel is set in the Sicily of the 1860’s, shortly after its conquest by Garibaldi from the Bourbons, and its annexation to the new Kingdom of Italy. The aspirations for a better life created by the charismatic Garibaldi, and the replacement of the despotic and backward rule of the Bourbons from Naples, with the constitutional monarchy of Piedmont, were soon disappointed. The new Kingdom had as little to offer to the agrarian masses of Sicily as the dynasty it had deposed. Unification led to the bankruptcy of the protected and inefficient Southern industries, higher taxes, compulsory national service, and the arrival of an industrialized world which Sicily was not prepared for. The opportunities for self-advancement became less rather than more and the gap between the rulers, the Northern monarchy of Savoy, and the ruled Sicilians became even greater, and there were rebellions in the island in favour of the deposed Bourbons.
This aspiration for betterment caused by the arrival of the railways, the telegraphy system, the opportunity given by national service to see how others lived in the city is at the heart of the novel. ’Ntoni of padron ’Ntoni is conscripted, and after a spell in Naples returns a new man — life has to be different, even if he is not sure in what way. In Visconti’s 1947 film of the novel, “La Terra Trema”, it is clear what the solution is, increased class consciousness but in the Sicily of 1860’s there is no solution. You must accept your lot, as not to do so, will lead only to despair. Life might be hard, but least it is clear, and the novel lays great stress in belonging, whether to a village, a family, or a trade. To go outside your environment as ’Ntoni does cannot bring anything better, and will only make it impossible to return, as he and Alfio Mosca learn. As in Hardy and the French Naturalist novels heredity, fate, social determinism, which had penetrated into literature from the works of Darwin, provide the structure of the novel. People might go to Alexandria, in Egypt, or Naples in search of their fortune, but there is no mass exodus to America as a solution to poverty and centuries of neglect. Verga wrote “I Malavoglia” during 1878-81 while thousands went in search of a better life to America, but he deliberately set it in the pre-emigration period, providing his characters with no escape.
The Malavoglias are victims of progress, and the restoration of the house by the Medlar Tree and their boat is only possible by turning against progress and returning to the time honoured values of the grandfather, the family pulling together, each one helping the other, like the five fingers of the hand, with the interests of the family greater than those of any individual member. The religion of the family is vindicated at the end, when the worldy wise ’Ntoni wants nothing better than to stay, now that he knows everything, but cannot, his example having brought shame on his family.
Although it is young ’Ntoni’s inability to do his share which leads to the collapse of the Malavoglia family it is aided and abetted by the grandfather’s moral code. It is the grandfather who speculates in the cargo of lupins, which brings about the death of Bastianazzo, and the debt to zio Crocifisso. It is also the grandfather who accepts to pay when he doesn’t have to, because despite what the law says, it is clear to him and Maruzza what is right and wrong. The spectacle of the Malavoglia scrimping and saving to pay the usurer, zio Crocifisso, for a cargo of lupins which were rotten when he sold them to the Malvoglia family, and losing everything while they do this is at the heart of the novel. There is no criticism of the usurer, as his values are those of the village and of society, while the Malavoglia lose their house and possessions, and must leave at night in shame. This is very much the survival of the fittest, with evolution feeling no compassion for the defeated, however noble. It is this which gives the novel its epic intensity.
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Verga intended “I Malavoglia” to be the first in a cycle of five novels in which he would study society and man’s innate aspirations for something more.
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