Journal of European Studies

Transcript

Journal of European Studies
http://jes.sagepub.com
Giovanni Verga and Emile Zola : A Question of Influence
Wendy Joyce and Elizabeth Mahler Schachter
Journal of European Studies 1977; 7; 266
DOI: 10.1177/004724417700702803
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, 266-
Giovanni Verga and Emile Zola : A Question
of Influence
WENDY
JOYCE ELIZABETH MAHLER SCHACHTER
and
University College ofNorth Wales, Bangor
Since the late nineteenth century, numerous critics’ have acknowledged
that similarities exist between certain aspects of the works of Giovanni
Verga and Emile Zola. Few, however, have examined these similarities
in detail, and still less have ventured to draw attention to any examples
of direct mutual influence between the two authors. In this article it is
proposed to discuss some of the influences which have already been established, to suggest further possible influences, and to indicate which of the
two authors might have benefitted most from ideas inspired by the other.
Foremost among the critics who have dealt with the connection between
Verga and Zola is Rene Temois, who, in a number of articles in recent
years in Les Cahiers
Naturalistes, has expounded his belief that Zola was
by Verga’s I AI alavoglia in the writing of La Joie de Vivre.
During the late 1870s, Zola was already gaining an international reputation, and by 1880 had puhlished nine of the twenty novels of his
Rougon-M acquart series. Verga’s popularity in Italy had, on the other
hand, if anything, declined when he turned from writing society novels
to the style which has become known as verismo, and he was virtually unknown outside Italy. Verga was therefore undenstandably delighted when
the correspondence he struck up in 1880 with a personal friend of Zola’s,
the Swiss Edouard Rod, who was to translate some of Verga’s works into
French, enabled him to introduce some of his own work to Zola, through
Rod as intermediary. From 1878 onwards in his letters to Luigi Capuana,
Verga had expressed an increasing admiration for the works of Zola, and
it was with deep bitterness that he admitted to Capuana on 11 April, 1881,
that the book which was later to be considered Verga’s masterpiece, had
had a very inauspicious beginning. &dquo;I Malavoglia hanno fatto fiasco,
fiasco pieno e completo&dquo;,2 but, he continues: &dquo;II peggio e che io non
sono convinto del fiasco, e che se dovessi tomare a scrivere quel libro lo
farei come l’ho fatto.&dquo; It was a blow to Verga’s pride that I Malavoglia
had been derided or ignored by Italian critics, and that it was going to
be left to a foreigner to bring Verga’s work to the attention of the public.
influenced
Thus he exclaims in the
same
letter:
Figurati che il primo articolo fatto sul serio mi verra forse, a quel
che me ne ha scritto, dal Sig. Rod, uno degli amici di Zola, il quale
ne scrivera nel ‘Parlement, o nel ’National.
distribution.
267
Edouard Rod did in fact write an article on I Malavoglia and the
collection of short stories Vita dei Canzpi (including Rosso Afalpelo),
which appeared in Le Parlement on 4 July, 1881, and which probably
was read by Zola.
Verga was pleased by Rod’s favourable article, and
and a few days later, on 16 July, asked Rod to forward to Zola both I
Malavoglia and Vita dei Campi. Excessively modest, Verga thought
that to send the books to Zola directly would be presumptuous. He wrote
to Rod :
La prego di
che la mia offerta non ha nessuna
sembrare che ne abbia alcuna, anche
scrivergli ne inviargli il libro direttamenteche e solo un omaggio naturalissimo reso al maestro, e all’ingegno
poderoso, cui tutti noi che tentiamo di cogliere la vita nella sua reale
manifestazione, dobbiamo qualcosa.’
aggiungere
pretesa-e appunto per
lontanamente-non osai
a voce
non
In 1882, at the same time as Rod was completing his translation into
French of I Alalavoglia, a meeting was arranged with Zola himself, and
from Paris, on 18 May, 1882, Verga announced to Capuana that he
and Rod would be going to Zola’s country house at Medan the following
Tuesday. There are unfortunately no surviving reports of the meeting
which took place : the meeting must however have been successful, since
Verga continued to refer to Zola with great respect in his letters to Rod,
asking periodically to be remembered to him, and calling him, &dquo;Lo
scrittore che e pill alto nella mia stima&dquo;,4 and since a somewhat erratic
correspondence was established between Verga and Zola himself. The
main period of this communucation seems to have been from 1881 to
1888, during which time Zola made a promise which was never fulfilled
to write an introduction to the French version of I Malavoglia.
Also,
having read the translation of Verga’s play Cavalleria Rusticana, Zola
wrote on 3 June, 1884 that he thought, quite correctlv as it happened,
that the play was too Sicilian in flavour for a Parisian audience, and that
the scene where Turiddu bites his rival’s ear as a challenge to the death
would be ridiculed. But, he added, &dquo;rill goute bien vivement la belle
simplicité de votre oeuvre, la sincerite cmue de ce petit drame, dont je
m’imagine parfaitement 1’effet pathetique sur un public italien, qui peut
en sentir tout le cote vecu&dquo;.6
The last known contact between Verga and Zola was in 1895 in
Capuana’s flat in Rome, when Zola was researching for his novel which
bears the name of the capital citv. According to I,ucio d’Ambra, who
claims to have been present at the meeting, Zola expressed his regret that
Verga had never attempted to form a school of rerismo in Ita.ly, as he
himself had created the naturalist Xledan group in France,.
In lus articles, Rene Temois uses the following pieces of evidence to
distribution.
268
suggest that Zola may have been influenced by I Afalavoglia in
writing
La Joie de hivre : Verga sent Zola a copy of I A4alavoglia in 1881,
which in 1882 was translated by Rod into French; Rod wrote an article
in Le Parlement on I Malavoglia in 1881, and Verga and Zola met in
1882. Under these circumstances, it seems impossible that Zola did not
know Verga’s novel in some detail. La Joie de Vivre finally appeared in
1884, although Zola had made it known three years earlier that he wanted
to write a novel inspired by the grief which the death of his mother
occasioned him.
La Joie de Vivre, contrary to what the title suggests, is in fact a work
about somow and strife, and does resemble I Malat,oglia in several important ways. Much of the action of the novels revolves around the struggles
of the people of a fishing village, primarily against the blind forces of
nature.
The majority of the villagers are, with the exception of the
Malavoglia themselves on the one hand, and Pauline Quenu on the other,
depicted as scheming and egocentric, clinging to their traditional way of
life even though it has become outmoded. After summarizing the chronology of events which made it likely that Zola knew Verga’s I Malavoglia,
Ternois concludes: &dquo;N’est-ce pas 1’exemple de Verga ... qui lui a donn6
l’id6e de situer dans un village au bord de la mer le roman de la douleur,
qui allait devenir en 1883 La Joie de Vivre ?&dquo;6
Important though this connection is, Rene Temois has failed to point
out what could be even more significant: a possible source of Germinal
in one of Verga’s short stories. Little interest seems to have been attached
by critics to the facts that, in July 1881, Rod wrote his article in Le
Parlement on the stories Vita dei Canipi, as well as on I Malavoglia. and
that Verga sent Vita dei Ca771pi to Zola at the same time as I Malatoglia.
This lack of interest is difficult to explain : perhaps the reason for it is
that the stories in Vita dei Campi, with the exception of Cavalleria Rusticana, have never become as well known as I Malavoglia. Yet Zola did
receive the short stories.
On 16 July, 1881, Verga wrote to Rod,
&dquo;Giacche Ella ha la bonta di presentare il mio libro a Zola, mi faccio
animo a spedirle I A4alavoglia e Vita dei Campi&dquo;.’
Even more worthy of note is the mention of Rod’s translation of one
isolated story from Vita dei Campi, that is Rosso Malpelo, the story with
which we arc concerned. On 26 Febmary, 1883, Verga wrote to Rod,
&dquo;Mandami pure, vi prego, la vostra traduzione del Rosso Malpelo e il
vostro articolo sulle Novelle Rusticane&dquo;.8 It seems that Zola was at least
He had been
as likely to know Rosso Malpelo as he was I AI alavoglia.
had
reviewed
sent a copy of the collection of short stories, Edouard Rod
them in Le Parlement in 1882, Rod had also done a translation of that
particular story, and possibly it was discussed when Verga and Zola met
at Medan in 1882.
distribution.
269
Rosso
Malpelo is a story about a vicious little boy who works in a mine.
implied that because generations of his family have worked for a
pittance in the mine, and often even lost their lives on thejob (his own
father is killed when a section of the mine collapses), Rosso Malpelo has
become ruthless and impervious to punishment. In 1884, the year after
Rod’s translation of Rosso Malpelo, Zola began to write his own story
about a mine, Germinal, containing the portrait of the extremely sadistic
eleven-year-old Jeanlin Maheu, who, like Rosso Malpelo, loses his father
during the course of the story. Jeanlin, also from a long-standing family
of miners, has worked out a whole system of making his own life comIt is
fortable at the expense of others.
The manuscript of Gernzinal.
according to the Pléiade edition of the
dates
from
2
Rougon-Macquart,
April, 1884, and ends on 23 January,
1885. A serialised edition of Geryninal appeared in Gil Blas from 26
November, 1884 to 25 February, 1885, and the first publication of the
book was bv Charpentier in March 1885.
In the 1965 Pleiade edition of the Rougon-Macquart, Henri Mitterand
traces the origins of Germinal, and comments on the fact that the novel
seems to have been very much a last-minute inclusion in the series: a
mining story was not mentioned in any context before Zola was sent Vita
dei Campi. Zola was a meticulous planner, and the omission of a major
novel such as Germinal from his plans and family trees for the RougonAfacquart is virtually unique. That Gernainal was thought of only at a
late date can be seen by examining two particular documenrts Zola produced during the appearance of the Rozigoii-Macqtiart series-a list of
projected novels, presmned to have been compiled in 1872, and a family
tree drawn up in 1878.
Taking first of all the 1872 plan : although Zola had begun writing
the Roii,go71-Afa<qiiart
only a year before he composed the list of novels
to be included in the series which this plan constituted, the list is already
almost complete, apart from the notable absence of a mining story.
Several of the titles are definitive-La Fortune des Rougon, La Curie,
Le Ventre, and La Faute de I’Abbe Afouret. The rest of the novels,
although lacking their final title, are equally recognizable. What is described as Le Roman Politiqlle-Eugène Rougon. became Son Excellence
Ellgène Rougon.. Le Roman d’Art-Claudo Lantier, became l’Oeuvre;
Le Roman sur le Haut Commerce-Octave Mouret, emerged as Au
Bonheiir des Dames, and Le Roman sur la Guerre d’ltalie-Jean Macquart, with a shift of exnphasis to the Franco-Prussian war, become La
Debdcle.
The last novel mentioned in Zola’s 1872 list was to be ‘’un 2e roman
ouvrier-Particuli~rement politique. L’ouvrier d’insurrection (outil r6volutionnaire), de la Commune&dquo;.’9 This is, in fact, the only novel of this
distribution.
270
1872
plan which is completely unrecognizable as anything which eventually emerged as part of the Rougon-Macquart. The Commune became
a feature of La Débâcle, and Germinal was in many respects a political
novel, but nothing in this last title of the list suggests the mining background of the novel. Again, in the Pleiade edition of the RougonAfacquart, Henri Mitterand draws attention to Zola’s apparently sudden
change of plan :
En realite, le roman ainsi d6fini ne sera jamais compose : l’ouvrier
6tudi6 dans une perspective politique devendra le personnage central
de Germinal, tandis que 1’6vocation de la Commune se fondra dans
le roman militaire prevu des 1869, et qui sera 1’avant-dernier de la
s~rie des Rougon-Macquart : La Débâcle. Ce dédoublement semble
cependant tardiff, et l’on ne trouve rien, dans les notes ou les confidences de Zola, qui permette de 1’estimer antérieur à 1880.10
The last sentence is particularly significant : there is no mention in any of
Zola’s writings before 1880, the approximate time when he first became
acquainted with Verga’s work, that he intended to change his plans.
Mitterand also supplies evidence that, although Zola talked in general
terms of a popular political novel, if he had conceived the idea of a story
about
a
mine
or a
strike, he
never
mentioncd it
even
to
his closest friends:
Fernand Xau, publiant la liste des romans
projetes par Zola ne font nulle mention d’une etude sur les gr~ves.
Et pas d’avantage Paul Lexis qui, dans son Emile Zola, pr6par6
dans la courant de 1881 par des conversations avec le romancier et
publi6 en 1882, se borne a indiquer, a peu pres dans les memes termes
de Xau, deux ans plus tot : &dquo;L’auteur des Rou{!on-A1 acquart fera
L’Assommoir décrit les moeurs de l’ouvrier;
un roman sur le peuple.
il reste a 6tudier sa vie sociale et politique.&dquo;1’
En 1880, De Amicis
et
Mitterand adds: &dquo;Zola ne médite encore que d’6tudier l’activite politique
de l’ouvrier Parisien .&dquo;
So far we have discussed Zola’s 1872 plan for the Rougon-Alacquart.
In this plan, as well as in a family tree Zola made in 1878, Etienne
Lantier, a member of the Macquart family, was to appear in a novel
about a railway, and was to have a &dquo;H6r6dit6 de 1’ivrognerie se toumant
When Germinal appeared in 1884, Etienne Lantier
en folie homicide&dquo;.
had become the leader of the miners, with no connection with a railway.
Although we learn that any sort of alcohol makes ,lacques behave in a
violent way, it is under circumstances of intolerable provocation, trapped
in the flooded mine shaft, that Etienne finally kills his rival Chaval. It
would bc stretching a point very far to say that this killing was caused
by a &dquo;H6r6dit6 de l’ivrognerie&dquo;. We find that the characteristics first
distribution.
271
planned for Etienne are
Jacques, the protagonist
transferred in a more definite way to his brother
of La Bête Humaine of 1890, who does indeed
become a homicidal maniac. In an 1893 family tree, Jacques is seen to
have the exact attributes which were originally intended for Etienne.
Jacques, a railway worker, has a &dquo;Hercdite de 1’alcoolisme se tournant
en folie homicide.
Etat de crime&dquo;.
In other words, from somewhere, Zola has got an idea for a mining
story which seems such an attractive prospect to him that he creates an
entirely new character, Jacques, and gives him the qualities earlier attributed to Etienne, leaving Etienne free to become the central figure in the
new storv.
In doing this, Zola took the risk of disrupting his carefully
character
scheme, since Gervaise Macquart is suddenly endowed
planned
with another son, whom she did not have in LJ Assommoir, and whose
presence in La Bête Humainc is explained away rather lamely by saying
that he stayed behind in Plassans when Gervaise moved to Paris with
Lantier.
It must also be added that although the sadistic eleven-year-old Jeanlin
does not play a central role in the finished version of Germinal. in the
sketches Zola made for the novel, the character of JeanLin is given great
emphasis, and Henri ~litterand remarks that: &dquo;Les dernieres pages de
cette partie de 1’ebauche
s’6tendent demesurement sur le caractere et
les actes du petit estropié.&dquo;12
It can of course be argued that other stories about mining must have
appeared in France between 1881 and 1883, apart from Rosso Malpelo.
There was Paul Heuzy’s Un Coin de la Vie de Afisère, and IBIaurice
Talmevr’s Lc Grisoii which appeared in 1880, but there is no concrete
evdence that Zola read these works. Gain, Mitterand says: &dquo;La parente
du Grisoll et de Germinal n’est pas assurée, et elle demeure en tout cas
fort limitee.&dquo;13 The contemporary books on mining in France which
Zola did admit to having consulted, seem to be of a factual rather than
a literary nature.
According to E. M. Grant,14 these included Simonin’s
La Vie Souterraine, Laveleye’s Le Socialisme Contemporain, Testut’s
LJ I ntcrnationale, and Borman’s hocabulaire des Houillciirs Liégois.
Zola does not seem, either, to have been inspired by any particular
political event, to begin the writing of Germinal. On the contrary, the
miners’ strike at Anzin which began on 21 February, 1884, was a remarkable coincidence, and a piece of luck as far as Zola’s documentation
&dquo;Zola’s Ebauche falls into at least three sections. Approxwas concerned.
imately the first half was surely composed before he made his trip to
Anzin on February 23 1884.&dquo;ls
It therefore becomes reasonable to suppose that although Zola most
definitely did not acquire all the social and political themes in Germinal
from Rosso Malpelo, Verga’s short story might well have given Zola the
...
distribution.
272
initial idea for a story on mining, with Rosso Malpelo inspiring the
character of Jeanlin Maheu. It is interesting to note that the two novels
in which Verga may have influenced Zola, La Joie de Vivre and Germinal,
appeared in consecutive years, the first in 1884, and the latter in 1885.
The close proximity of the publication of these two novels gives even
stronger grounds for supposing that they were conceived roughly at the
same time, and from the two works which Verga sent together to Zola
in 1881.
If, however, Zola found some inspiration for Germinal in Rosso Malpelo, it is equally likely that Verga in his turn borrowed back other ideas
from Germinal to write Dal Tuo al Mio, which appeared first as a play
in 1903, then as a novel in 1905. Nino Cappellani acknowledges, but
makes no attempt to analyse, the mutual influence extant in Germinal in
his Opere di Giovanni Verga : &dquo;Sarebbe da studiare Germinale, il poema
dei minatori del nord, che ha evidenti caratteri verghiani ed e vicino,
anche nella tela generale, all’ultimo romanzo del Verga Dal Tuo al
Mio.&dquo;’s
Dal Tuo al Mio, like Ger7ninal, is a story about a mine, in this case a
sulphur mine. Superficially, the plot of Dal Tuo al Mio is almost
identical to that of Germinal. The cerutral character, Barone Navarra,
the owner of the small mine, is very similar to Deneulin in GermÍ11al.
He is an enlightened and compassionate man, who, although he knows
his miners deserve and need a pay-rise, cannot afford to give them one
because the price of sulphur is constantly dropping. He can barely even
afford to keep his mine in working order. Like Deneulin, he is eventually
forced to sell out, and accept the humiliation of being a mere employee
of the new owner of the mine.
In both Germinal and Dal Tuo al tl~io, the miners inevitably go on
strike. After several weeks of strike the local shopkeeper refuses to give
credit, and the miners become crazed with hunger. Dal Tuo al Mio
ends with the miners threatening to sabotage the mine by setting fire to
it, and troops being called in to quell the riot. It must be stressed that
although all these elements are taken from Germinal, Dal Tuo al Mio
is in every respect a poor copy. It is only about 50 pages long, and
completely lacks Zola’s psychological insight into the miners’ problems;
indeed, it has something of the atmosphere of a melodrama, with the
impoverished baron ranting about his daughter marrvring beneath her
station.
Several other examples can be given of Verga adopting themes from
Zola’s novels, and using them in his short stories. In the collection of
stories Per le Vie, two novelle conta.in elements of L’Assommoir. In
Piazza della Scala is the story of a Milanese couple whose daughter
Adelina, a milliner’s apprentice, runs away from home, as Nana does.
distribution.
273
The mother finds consolation in drink, hiding the glass from the liquor
shop under her apron on the way home, exactly as old mother Coupeau
does when Gervaise sends her out for drink. The same theme of evasion
of responsibilities, and oblivion in drink is repeated in Conforti, by another
woman whose life has heen a failure: &dquo;Anch’essa ora i denari del temo
li spendeva in tanta acquavite, di na‘scosto, sotto il grembiale, e il suo
conforto era di sentirsene il cuor caldo, senza pensare a nulla, seduta di
faccia alla finestra, guardando di fuori i tetti umidi che sgocciolavano.&dquo;&dquo;
Both these stories are little more than thumbnail sketches, and cannot
by any stretch of the imagination be counted amongst Verga’s best work.
Traditionally it is supposed that in a connection between two authors,
it is the lesser known of the pair who gains the most from the link between
them. In this case, it would be logical to assume that it was Verga who
derived the greater value from the meetings and interchange of letters
with Zola. However, we have seen so far that although it is likely that
Zola gained inspiration for two of his successful Rougon-AI acquart novels,
La Joic de Vivre and Gernzinal, from Verga’s work, when Verga in
return borrowed ideas from Zola’s novels, the results were usually not
of any particular literary merit. For example, Guilio Cattaneo says of
the play Dal Tuo al ~Iio : ‘‘Dal Tuo al rtlio non aveva molto di comune
con i drammi precedenti ... : B’1 mancava sopratutto quello sgomento
religioso che e la nota piii profonda e conturbante del teatro del Verga. &dquo;18
In an article in A UAILA, K. H. Hartley has suggested that in a more
significant way, Zola might have quite unconsciously done Verga more
harm than good : &dquo;The harm Zola caused him was in inducing Verga
to deal in a systematic fashion with the middle and upper classes, as he
had to in order to round out his saga of ascent.&dquo;19 What Hartley means
by this is that Verga had copied from Zola the idea of writing a cycle
of novels. Verga’s cycle, at first called La Marea, and later I Vinti, was
to consist of five novels: I M al.arof!.liaJ Mastro Don Gesualdo, La Duchessa
di Leyra, L’Onoret7olc Scipione, and L’Uomo di Lusso. As in the
Rou,gon-Macquart, a family link was to exist through Gesualdo in the
second novel, father of Isabella of the third novel, who in turn was to
be mother of Scipione of the last two novels. The plan for the cycle
which Verga revealed to Salvatore Paola in a letter dated 21 April,
1878,20 was strikingly like Zola’s arrangement of the Rougon-Macquart :
Ho in mente un lavoro, che mi sembra bella e grande, una specie
di fantasmagoria della lotta per 1.:1. vita, che si estende dal cenciauolo
al ministro e all’artista, e assume tutte le forme dall’ambizione
au’avidit~ del guadagno, e si presta a mille rappresentazioni del
gran grottesco umano.2’
This
plan
is very similar
to
Zola’s intentions in the
Rougon-Macquart
distribution.
274
which he states in the
preface
to
La Fortune Des
Rougon
in 1871.
The
Rougon-Macquart
Partent du peuple,ils
ils montent a
modeme que
social.
s’irradient dans toute la societe contemporaine,
les situations par cette impulsion essentiellement
reqoivent les basses classes en marche a travers le corps
toutes
Yet whereas Zola’s novels
success, of Verga’s probe considered a masterpiece, but
Mastro Don Gesualdo is in general slightly less highly regarded. Of
La Duchessa di Leyra only one chapter was ever written (although Verga
lived on for thirty years after he began the novel), and the last two works
of the series were never even started.
A very obvious answer to tlis apparent lack of success lies in the fact
that Verga does not seem to have taken into consideration that although
a series of novels ranging frcm the very poor to the most important figures
of the artistic and political world was eminently suited to Second Empire
France, and in particular to Paris, the same could not be said of Sicily,
which had been annexed to the newly unified kingdom of Italy. I Malavoglia is brilliantly successful precisely because it is about the Sicilian
peasamtry, but because there was not the same variety of social types in
Sicily as in Paris, Verga’s novels become proportionally less successful
as he moves higher up the social scale.
The existing fragment of La
Duchessa di Le)’ra contains no real characterization, and is totally lacking
in vitality.
In yet another important way, Verga was influenced by Zola to profess a belief in something which did not really suit his individual style.
Verga expressed a desire to introduce Zola’s theory of impersonality into
his novels, setting out his ideas in the preface to his short story L’Amante
di Gramigna, in 1880 :
were
jected series, I A4alavoglia has
a
come
resounding
to
Quando nel romanzo l’affinità e la coesione di ogni sua parte sara
cosi completa, che il processo della creazione rimarra un mistero,
come lo svolgersi delle passion umane, e 1’armonia delle sue forme
cosi perfetta, la sincerita della sua realta cosl evidente, il suo modo e
la sua ragione di essere cosi necessarie, che la mano dell’artista
rimarra assolutamente invisible, allora avra l’impronta dell’awenimento reale, l’opera d’arte sembrera essersi fatta da se.&dquo;
Zola’s theory of impersonality had been set out in Le Roman Experi-
1880,
mental in
where he claimed that because Claude Bernard had said
that medicine was a science and not an art, literature ought to be considered a science too, and that complete impersonality ought, as a result,
to be maintained in creative writing.
This argument is clearly not logical,
distribution.
275
and was basically no more than a piece of publicity. According to the
Goncourt brothers, Zola himself admitted as much to Flaubert: &dquo;Eh!
mon Dieu, je me moque comme vous de ce mot naturalisme, et
cependent
je le repeterai, parce qu’il faut un bapteme aux choses, pour que le public
les croie neuves&dquo;,2 and even the usually admiring Capuana felt obliged
to say :
Gia io non credo che lo stesso Zola abbia mai preso sul serio la sua
recetta, Aveva bisogno di un motto, di una bandiera per mettere in
vista 1’opera sua; e trovatasi tra le mani la Scienza Sperimentale di
Claudio Bernard ... imbasti in fretta e in furia la teoria del romanzo
sperimentale e la predico ai quattro venti.24
Fortunately perhaps, Verga never did really put into practice his theory
of total impersonality. Although Veiga’s works are impersonal in the
sense that the characters tell their own stories, often without the intervention of the narrator, it could never be said that &dquo;the artist’s hand
remains absolutely invisible&dquo;. We are aware of Verga’s presence on
every page in his sympathy for the vinti, who are not so much just the
poor, as those who in general cannot come to terms with life. As Croce
says :
I1
proposito dell’impersonalith, in un artista come il Verga, o rimase
(e cio accade le piii volte) un’illusione ... ; owero, quando
opero in modo diretto e positivo, cagiono alcune deficienze nell’opera
di lui, mutandone talvolta, sebbene di rado, 1’austerita in alcunche
di arido, di scucito, di poco significante.... Nel Verga quel
proposito era in aperto contrasto col suo temperamento passionale,
triste
e
amaro.2s
honoured as he should have been in his
his attempts to adopt ideas such as have
been mentioned, which were not suited to his particular skills and
situation. It was not until 1920, when he was 80 years old, that he
received official recognition by being made a senator, and that the public
gradually became aware of his genius for capturing the essence of the
Sicilian peasant world.
It is well known that Zola was never averse to adopting the ideas of
slightly less well known writers whom he considered his acolytes. Robert
Baldick points out, in his Life ofJ. K. Huysmans, that in 1881
Indisputably, Verga
was not
lifetime, perhaps owing partly
to
Zola had been in the habit of employing his young friends to gather
the material for his novels which he was unable or unwilling to collect
himself: and although Huysmans for one had proved his worth
with several major works of his own, Zola persisted in treating him
distribution.
276
as a prentice writer.
Thus, in the space of one month, he was
called upon to provide the master novelist with detailed information
about his own family history, the work of diocesan architects and
their relation with the clergy, the rates of pay of copyists employed
by students at the Ecole Centrale, the interior and exterior appearance of houses in the Rue Saint-Roch, and the designs of rare postage
stamps.26
Verga probably
made
an
unconscious contribution
to
Zola’s work in this
by supplying new ideas.
As for Verga himself, it is undeniable that the change he made from
the writing of society novels to rerismo was, as he himself thought, the
best thing he ever did. In 1881 in a letter to Felice Cameroni, he wrote:
&dquo;Il mio solo merito sta forse nell’axere avuto il coraggio e la coscienza di
rinunciare ad un success piu generale e piii facile.&dquo;27 But those situations
and methods which Verga adopted directly from Zola’s novels seem for
the most part to have been only detrimental to his undoubted talent as a
primitive writer; and it is tempting to think that, on the whole, it might
well have been Zola who gained the greater advantage from the connecway
tion between the
two
writers.
REFERENCES
2.
3.
example, René Ternois, Benjamin Crémieux, Nino Cappellani, K.
Hartley, Edouard Rod, Luigi Capuana, Felice Cameroni.
Giovanni Verga, Opere (Verona, 1955), 893.
Giovanni Verga. Lettre al suo Traduttore (Florence. 1954), 35.
4.
Ibid., 74.
5.
René Ternois, Zola et ses Amis Italiens (Publications de l’Université de
Dijon, 1967), 59.
René Ternois, "Zola et Verga", Les Cahiers Naturalistes, xiv (1960), 545.
Verga, Lettre al suo Traduttore, 35.
Ibid., 75.
Emile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart (Paris, 1965), v, Annexe 13.
Ibid., iii, 1815.
1.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
For
H.
Ibid., 1823.
Ibid., 1832.
Ibid., 1833.
E. M. Grant. Zola’s Germinal. A critical and historical study (Leicester,
1962), 25.
Ibid., 16.
Nino Cappellani, Opere di Giovanni Verga (Florence, 1940), 351.
Giovanni Verga, Tutte le Novelle (Milan, 1975), i, 420.
Giulio Cattaneo, Giovanni Verga (Turin, 1963), 306.
K. H. Hartley, "Giovanni Verga and Zola", AUMLA, no. 17 (1962), 72.
distribution.
277
21.
In his article "Zola et Verga" (see ref. 6), p. 543, René Ternois puts forward the hypothesis that Verga learnt of Zola’s methods from an article
by Edmondo de Amicis, in the Illustrazione Italiana in November 1878.
"Ce mode de travail avait-il toujours été le sien, ou lui avait-il été
’Illus
l
suggéré par les pages qu’Edmondo de Amicis avait publiées dans trazione Italiana en novembre 1878, et où il racontait sa visite à Zola
l’été précédent ... ? However, Verga’s letter to Paola, written in April
of the same year, and therefore several months before the appearance of
De Amicis’s article, clearly suggests that Verga was already acquainted
with Zola’s system, probably from a source such as the introduction to
La Fortune des Rougon (1871) and De Sanctis’s articles on Zola published
in the journal Roma of 1878, now in Saggi Critici (Bari, 1957), vol. iii.
Federico de Roberto, Casa Verga e altri Saggi Verghiani (Florence, 1964),
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
Giovanni Verga, Tutte le Novelle, i, 200.
Journal des Goncourt (Paris, 1891), vol. v.
Luigi Capuana, Gli Ismi Contemporanei (Catania, 1898), 67.
B. Croce, La Letteratura Italiana (Bari, 1957), iii, 432.
Robert Baldick, The Life of J. K. Huysmans (Oxford, 1955), 62.
Nino Cappellani, Vita di Giovanni Verga (Florence, 1940), 217.
20.
"
214.
distribution.

Journal of European Studies

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