The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879. In 1880 Matilde Serao became suddenly famous by the publication of the charming story Fantasia (“Fantasy”), which is now first presented to an English public. It was followed by a much weaker study of Neapolitan life, Cuore Infermo (“A Heart Diseased”). In 1881 she published “The Life and Adventures of Riccardo Joanna,” to which she added a continuation in 1885. It is not possible to enumerate all Madame Serao’s successive publications, but the powerful romance La Conquista di Roma (“The Conquest of Rome”), 1882, must not be omitted. This is a very careful and highly finished study of bureaucratic ambition, admirably characterised. Since then she has written in rapid succession several volumes of collected short stories, dealing with the oddities of Neapolitan life, and a curious novel, “The Virtue of Cecchina,” 1884. Her latest romances, most of them short, have been Terno Secco (“A Dry Third”), a very charming episode of Italian life, illustrating the frenzied interest taken in the public lotteries, 1887; Addio Amore (“Good-bye Love”), 1887; La Granda Fiamma, 1889; and Sogno di una notte d’estate (“A Summer Night’s Dream”), 1890.
The naturalism of Matilde Serao deserves to be distinguished from that of the French contemporaries with whom she is commonly classed. She has a finer passion, more of the true ardour of the South, than Zola or Maupassant, but her temperament is distinctly related to that of Daudet. She is an idealist working in the school of realism; she climbs, on scaffolding of minute prosaic observation, to heights which are emotional and often lyrical. But her most obvious merit is the acuteness with which she has learned to collect and arrange in artistic form the elements of the town life of Southern Italy. She still retains in her nature something of the newspaper reporter’s quicksilver, but it is sublimated by the genius of a poet.
EDMUND GOSSE.
CONTENTS
| Page | |
| INTRODUCTION | [v] |
| PART I | [1] |
| PART II | [38] |
| PART III | [114] |
| PART IV | [179] |
| PART V | [225] |
FANTASY.
PART I.
I.
“The discipline for to-morrow is this....” said the preacher, reading from a small card. “You will sacrifice to the Virgin Mary all the sentiments of rancour that you cherish in your hearts, and you will kiss the schoolfellow, the teacher, or the servant whom you think you hate.”