Novelle rusticane, consisting of twelve stories, all or most of which had been published in periodicals between 1880 and 1882, is considered to contain his best short-story work, along with Vita dei campi; five pieces from Novelle rusticane are included in this Dover volume. (The others are: “Il Reverendo” [The Reverend], “Cos’è il Re” [What Is the King], “Don Licciu Papa,” “Il mistero” [The Mystery], “Gli orfani” [The Orphans], “I galantuomini” [The Gentry], and the above-mentioned “Di là del mare.”)

Also in 1883, Verga wrote his best and most successful play, Cavalleria rusticana, based on his story of the same name in Vita dei campi. It was first performed in 1884; in the later course of that year Verga visited London and Paris.

After 1885, Verga lived chiefly in Sicily, making many trips to Rome and continuing to write extensively, although his later works, with one enormous exception, are not as highly regarded as Vita dei campi, I Malavoglia, and Novelle rusticane. That exception is his second Sicilian novel, which some critics call his very best effort, Mastro-don Gesualdo (prefigured in the 1880 story “La roba” [see below]), published in installments in 1888 and in book form in 1889.

In the 1887 short-story volume Vagabondaggio (Roaming), only the title story is Sicilian. Verga’s last two short-story collections were I ricordi del Capitano d‘Arce (The Reminiscences of Captain d‘Arce), 1891, and Don Candeloro e C.i (Don Candeloro and His Company; about provincial strolling players), 1894.

In 1889 Verga entered into a relationship, which would last the rest of his life, with the pianist Dina Castellazzi di Sordevolo. In 1895 he wrote a play version of the story “La Lupa” from Vita dei campi; it was performed in 1896. His writing continued at a slower rate; he spent a lot of his time revising his earlier works for new editions, which discerning critics don’t prize as highly as the original versions. Between 1912 and 1919 he was involved in screenwriting and film production, especially cinematic versions of his own stories and novels.

In 1920 he received great honors on the occasion of his eightieth birthday, and he was made an Italian senator. He died of thrombosis in 1922 at his ancestral home in Catania. Both in his lifetime and afterward, his reputation had its ups and downs. His greatest achievements as a writer—both his concern for the lowly and downtrodden, and the colloquial, unrhetorical style of his best Sicilian stories—were not always appreciated in his lifetime, but the critical tide turned in his favor in the 1920s, and at the present time it seems safe to say that he is an imperishable classic in Italy, if still not universally recognized elsewhere.

The Sicilian Stories: General Remarks

Generally considered Verga’s best work, along with his two Sicilian novels, are “Nedda” (1874, Brigola, Milan) and the stories in the two volumes Vita dei campi (Rural Life; published in 1880 by Emilio Treves, Milan) and Novelle rusticane (Rustic Stories; published at the end of 1882, dated 1883, by Felice Casanova, Turin). These stories typify Verga’s verismo (true-to-life) style, based on French realists such as Flaubert and naturalists such as Zola, and championed in Italy by Verga’s Sicilian friend, the writer Luigi Capuana.

During the decades after the first book publications (themselves revisions of the very-first periodical publications), Verga undertook further rewriting, and changed the contents of the volumes by adding or removing stories and by altering their sequence within the volumes. This Dover edition preserves the text of the first book publications, and presents twelve stories (“Nedda,” six from Vita dei Campi, and five from Novelle rusticane) in their original sequence (details below). Each of at least four of the stories included here has been singled out by various critics as Verga’s best single story.

Generally speaking, the Vita dei campi stories present their characters unpolemically as part of an almost mythically unchanging natural and social environment, whereas the Novelle rusticane stories contain more unveiled social protest, and reflect their specific era, during which the bourgeoisie was being enriched at the expense of the nobility and the clergy, while the peasantry remained exploited. Additional major themes, as throughout Verga’s entire oeuvre, are love and solitude.

These stories present an entire sociology and ethnography of the time and place concerned. Verga’s Sicily is not the whole island, but an area within a 30-mile radius north, west, and particularly south-southwest of Catania. The time is more or less the time of writing, or shortly before. Unobtrusively, but skillfully, the stories reveal the social classes, a wide variety of occupations, home life, popular amusements, religion and superstitions—the entire life of the people down to their characteristic sayings and gestures. A strong feeling of fatalism emerges, which the author appears to share (his two Sicilian novels were intended to be parts of a large cycle to be called I Vinti (Those Defeated by Life).

Unlike many sentimentalizing 19th-century depictors of village life, Verga doesn’t paint an idyllic picture. The landscape has its own beauties, but it is a hard one to live in. Ignorance and envy are almost institutionalized. Of course, Verga does indicate that poverty is to blame for many individual or societal character defects; and he is fair enough to point out occasionally that even the gentry can suffer and become impoverished. (The “gentry,” galantuomini, of his stories are usually small or middle-range landowners, not the immensely wealthy and powerful owners of huge “latifundia.”)

Verga’s style in the Sicilian stories, in many ways a contrast to his earlier “Milanese” approach, is plain and straightforward, largely avoiding active participation by the author as an all-knowing figure who feels free to address the reader directly. He makes much use of the technique of reporting his characters’ thoughts and plans in their own personal phraseology and diction even when he isn’t using dialogue (direct discourse). He employs very little actual Sicilian dialect, but his standard Italian frequently contains thoughts, proverbs, and turns of phrase that are translated or adapted from Sicilian. There are numerous rare and unusual words, and uncommon spellings of common words. All of these demands on the reader are worth the trouble, though, because the material is so rich and rewarding.

The Sicilian stories constantly use certain terminology (sometimes in a standard Italian form, sometimes in Sicilian) that calls for clarification:

Forms of Address. To retain the flavor of the original, the English translation herein uses equivalents or near-equivalents in English of certain courtesy titles that precede people’s baptismal names. Compare, literally “godfather,” commonly prefixed to names of rural men, is rendered as “neighbor” in this volume; the feminine equivalent is comare. Zio (“uncle”), a term of respect for older rural men, is rendered as “‘Uncle.’” (Feminine: zia.) Gnà, which some scholars have seen as derived from signora and others from donna, is used when addressing rural women; its English equivalent here is “Mis’,” the American rural form of “Mrs.” or “Miss.” Massaro, literally “tenant farmer” or “smallholder,” is rendered (when a title) as “farmer.” Curatolo is rendered literally as “sheep farmer,” or just “farmer.” Mastro, a term applied to artisans and skilled workmen, is rendered as “Master.” Don, a courtesy title for men of the gentry, or at least well-to-do men, is now familiar to Americans and is left unchanged; its feminine form is donna. The title character of Verga’s second great Sicilian novel, Mastro-don Gesualdo, is so termed because he has ascended from the artisan class to the gentry (among whom he is extremely unhappy: an example of the people who have unwisely broken with “their own kind,” as mentioned at the end of the story “Fantasticheria”). On the subject of forms of address, the reader of the Italian texts should pay very close attention to the social and psychological underpinnings of the use of the familiar tu and the polite voi for “you”; this couldn’t be rendered in the English, but is an important feature of the stories.

Money. For the sake of historical precision, all terms designating specific sums of money, and weights and measures, have been left in their Italian forms in the translation. The basic unit of currency is the lira, which was worth about 20 cents (U.S.) at the time. The lira is divided into a hundred centesimi. A tarì was worth 42½ centesimi; a carlino, 25 centesimi; a soldo, 5 centesimi; a grano, 2½ centesimi. An onza (or oncia) was worth 12¾ lire. The terms baiocco and quattrino refer to very small denominations, and aren’t used specifically (thus they are translated into equivalent English expressions).

Weights and Measures. A cafiso was about 6 pounds, but it varied according to place and time.