The second novel, “Mastro Don Gesualdo”, gives us the self-made man whose social pretentions brings about his downfall as his money is insufficient to bring about his acceptance in the rigid structure of 19th c Sicily. The next novel, “La Duchessa di Leyra” was begun but never finished, so Verga’s study of society was limited to the fishermen of Aci Trezza and an enriched peasant. It is in the small enclosed world of Aci Trezza that Verga is most eloquent. Although ostensibly a narrow canvas, the whole of the world is found within its pages, with a penetration and insight and harmony not to be found anywhere else in Verga’s work. We are taken inside the mind and the soul of the characters, so that we believe that we are there watching as a bystander, and not the beneficiaries of the author’s narration.

The language of the book is strange, whether in the original Italian or the English of the translation. It is not there to be transposed elsewhere, it is unique and fashioned to represent the enclosed world of Aci Trezza and nowhere else. It is literary, but distorted to reflect the dialect and speech patterns of the fishermen, with the expressions and proverbs restricted to the elements, the sea, the land and the everyday objects of the peasant and the fishermen. There is a lot of direct speech, the character speaking for themselves, and even more indirect speech, with statements seemingly coming from someone, but no one in particular. This is what a lot of the critics refer to as the mystic village chorus. What in Joyce becomes interior monologue is supplied externally by comments which sound like a villager speaking. This degree of dialogue, whether direct and indirect, gives the novel great freshness and vividness, and makes us feel we are one of the mystic chorus, abiding our turn to have our say. It is this feeling of being part, if only as a bystander which pulls at the heartstrings of the reader, and makes “I Malavoglia” so unforgettable. It is a world where everyone knows everyone else, where people are referred to as uncle, neighbour or cousin, and the sight of a strange face is a cause for suspicion. But it is a world where the stranger is entering, and there is nostalgia for the past. The social order is changing and even in Aci Trezza, people can be conscripted to fight in unknown wars and new taxes be imposed.

What represents the past are the proverbs which give the wisdom of the ancients, tried and trusted statements which do not lie, and have withstood the test of time. There is no need to think, as the proverb has done it for you, with the neighbours exchanging proverbs of an evening. It is only the new men like the apothecary who need to think and argue, as they wish for a different world. For padron ’Ntoni it has all been said before, and it is just a case of finding the right proverb or saying. When padron ’Ntoni loses his wits after an accident at sea, his proverbs become meaningless. The wisdom of the past has no function now, with ’Ntoni in prison and Lia living immorally in the city.

*   *   *   

Italian literature, which was during the Renaissance the world’s greatest literature, declined during the Counter Reformation, and by the 19th c was very second rate. Verga had very little of a narrative tradition to follow. There was Foscolo’s “Le Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis”, written in the romantic style of the early Goethe. A generation later Manzoni produced “I Promessi Sposi”, a historical novel in the grand manner, full of, for the time, realism, psychological perception, with two peasants for its heroes. Idealized and over didactic as it is, it ranks as one of the great achievements of Italian literature, and gave a model which many followed.

Verga began as a romantic novelist, writing novels of passion set in the city. His main influence were the Bohemian poets whom he frequented in Milan. These earlier novels are not read today. It was when Verga forsook the decadence of the town for the struggle for existence going on in his native Sicily that he found his voice as a writer. His florid prose style became shaped into an economical and sharply tuned tool. In 1874 he wrote “Nedda”, his first attempt at a realist story set in Sicily. Other short stories followed, including “Fantasticheria”, which became the model for “I Malavoglia”.