Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/89

1885.] to become rich, easily, without exertion. His father listens to his harangues, opens his eyes wide, scratches his head thoughtfully, and asks: "Rich! and what shall we do when we are rich?" 'Ntoni, too, scratched his head, and began to think what they would do. "We shall do as the others do," he said at last. "We shall do nothing. We shall be in the town and do nothing, like the rich, and eat meat every day and white bread." This is the keynote to the situation, needless to say that it ends badly – that 'Ntoni sinks lower and lower into degradation, drawing his whole family after him into ruin. Their convulsive struggles to keep themselves upright, their vain efforts to fight against the tide that is slowly but surely creeping onwards to overwhelm them at last, form deeply pathetic reading.

Verga's masterpiece is essentially a creation of our modern form of philosophical thought, an outcome of Darwinism. The difference between contemporary novels and those of the epoch immediately preceding ours might almost be roughly defined as in their case the endeavour to paint life as we should like it to be, and in ours a photographically true picture of existence as it is. It must not, however, be inferred that Verga's tales are purely painful reading. Cicero already has observed that a Sicilian is never so miserable as to be unable to utter a bon mot, and Verga is too faithful an observer not to introduce this feature. His peasants possess wit and shrewd repartee, and from the modern dweller in the land we better understand the ancient. Like the ancient inhabitants, so the moderns too delight in rural life; and for this cause, in the same way, that classic bucolic poetry originated in Sicily, the modern Italian rustic novelette has arisen thence.

One word as to Verga's language. In dealing with Sicilians he had special difficulties to overcome, for the dialect of the island is not understood out of its borders. So there remained nothing for it but to get out of the dilemma as best he could, if he would be read by all Italy, and make his people talk Tuscan. He has so happily blended this with characteristic Sicilian expressions and technical terms, that the origin of his people is never forgotten, while their language is made comprehensible to all. The success of his novels is his best defence towards those who have blamed him for this step.

"La petite Sand Italienne," such is the complimentary title given to Matilde Serao by a French critic; and with vast differences there are certainly also analogies between these writers, though Matilde Serao is too much as yet upon the threshold of her career for us to say in what direction it may still develop. Among the women writers of contemporary Italy she undoubtedly takes the leading place for originality and boldness, for subtle grace and accurate observation. Further, although she has clearly gone to school among the French and studied carefully their modern realists, she has retained the national flavour, so that by no possibility could the scenes of her stories be laid elsewhere than in hot-passioned, imaginative, sensuously beautiful Southern Italy. Matilde Serao is the best exponent of the new literary movement that takes its birth at Naples, – a movement that has been reproached, and not unjustly, with regarding life too exclusively from the sensuous and emotional side. As a woman, Matilde Serao naturally inclines to these tendencies;