Fogazzaro, Antonio. Woman; translated from the Italian by F. Thorold Dickson. †$1.50. Lippincott.
7–32327.
The action of this novel, filled with a strange mixture of spiritual discernment, theories of reincarnation, and the idea of the vendetta, takes place at a castle hermitage owned by the count Caesar d’Ormengo. There falls to the count the care of a beautiful niece Mariana, morbid in fancies and self-analysis. She learns from a secret compartment in her escritoire that she is the reincarnation of an ancestor who went mad in those very walls because of inhuman treatment, and who commands that the one whose eyes shall fall upon the memorandum of her agony find the way for revenge. Involved in the scheme of vendetta are the count, Corrodo Silla, a young secretary whose life is linked to Mariana’s as the reincarnated lover, a German secretary and his daughter. The story waxes horrible as Mariana executes her mission of vengeance: she causes the death of the count, kills Silla and drowns herself. But through all is inexorable fate, to which, not conscious of her own power to baffle it, she yields.
“In bare outline the story would appear merely a morbid tragedy. It is the treatment of Fogoazzaro that redeems and gives to it distinction.”
| + + | Acad. 72: 338. Ap. 6, ’07. 1400w. |
“An experiment in mystic melodrama which is only saved at times from sinking to the level of pure sensationalism by the author’s fine delineation of certain personages.”
| + − | Ath. 1907, 1: 502. Ap. 27. 370w. |
“The translation is in excellent, idiomatic English.”
| + | Nation. 84: 545. Je. 13, ’07. 90w. |