CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
BY GIOVANNI VERGA
Giovanni Verga was born at Catania, Sicily, in 1840. He was at first a romanticist, carrying on the traditions of Manzoni. Between 1874 and 1880, he produced two masterpieces, dealing with the life of the Sicilian peasant, in which he found his true bent, abandoning his earlier romanticism. With his fellow townsman, Capuana, he now stands at the head of the Italian “veristi,” or naturalists, often compared with Zola. His style is singularly vigorous and sincere, especially in describing the customs and analyzing the souls of the Sicilian peasants. But his plots are often confusing and long drawn out; he has attempted drama, but with little success. Yet, strangely enough, his short story, “Cavalleria Rusticana,” which he afterward developed into a novel, has been made into one of the most popular, dramatic, concentrated one-act operas of the world—the “Cavalleria Rusticana” of the composer Mascagni.
CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA
BY GIOVANNI VERGA
Translated by Frederic Taber Cooper. Copyright, 1907, by P. F. Collier & Son.
After Turridu Macca, Mistress Nunzia’s son, came home from soldiering, he used to strut every Sunday, peacock-like, in the public square, wearing his rifleman’s uniform, and his red cap that looked just like that of the fortune-teller waiting for custom behind the stand with the cage of canaries. The girls all rivaled each other in making eyes at him as they went their way to mass, with their noses down in the folds of their shawls; and the young lads buzzed about him like so many flies. Besides, he had brought back a pipe, with the king on horseback on the bowl, as natural as life; and he struck his matches on the back of his trousers, raising up one leg as if he were going to give a kick. But for all that, Master Angelo’s daughter Lola had not once shown herself, either at mass or on her balcony, since her betrothal to a man from Licodia, who was a carter by trade, and had four Sortino mules in his stable. No sooner had Turridu heard the news than, holy great devil! but he wanted to rip him inside out, that was what he wanted to do to him, that fellow from Licodia. However, he did nothing to him at all, but contented himself with going and singing every scornful song he knew beneath the fair one’s window.
“Has Mistress Nunzia’s Turridu nothing at all to do,” the neighbors asked, “but pass his nights in singing, like a lonely sparrow?”