Cavalleria Rusticana and Other Stories Book

Giovanni Verga is the writer much praised by D H Lawrence, which you might consider to be a recommendation or a deterrent, depending on your view of Lawrence. He was a member of a wealthy Sicilian family, and yet mostly writes (in this collection) about the poor country folk around him.

The stories are varied, but recurring themes include adultery, poverty and murder. Verga writes with a degree of sensitivity about the poor people of his region. None of the characters are entirely unsympathetic, not even the almost feral Rosso Malpelo, a young boy who is savage but more of a force of nature than a malicious brute.

The characters are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. They live in dire poverty. Malaria and cholera threaten their lives and livelihoods. There is no succour to be gained from government and church, who do not appear in the stories as supporting agents. Possibly god may be kind, but god seems absent. Employers are harsh, and self-employment (people who own the land) often ends in bankruptcy.

Verga's compassion only extends so far. Most of the stories end on a pessimistic note. While Verga cares about his characters, he appears to have a low opinion of them too. The rustics are as much in danger from their own shortcomings as they are from external agencies.

They are like children, driven by passions beyond their control. They lust after married partners. They fall in love with absurdly unsuitable people. They become angry and get into fights, or kill other people.

In the ironically-titled 'Freedom', the locals are moved to revolt against their conditions, but Verga does not see this as a gesture of solidarity or a welcome workers' movement. Rather they are rabble driven by rage into acting against their own interests, and committing cruel and savage acts of murder against innocent women and children until they are arrested and punished.

The stories here are readable and there is plenty of colourful description. Perhaps what is lacking is any kind of spark or excitement. Thrilling things happen in theory, but there is something so downbeat about them that even they fail to set the stories alight, and many just peter off.

Admittedly Verga says that he is not writing stories with an intended message. In 'Gramigna's Mistress', Verga dedicates the first five paragraphs to explaining his manifesto that the author should be absent from his own works. This is stated without irony.

Do stories need to have a message? Certainly not. Nonetheless a focus helps. Otherwise it is merely the life-history of a character or a sequence of meaningless events. Sometimes in spite of himself, Verga points out the moral. In 'Property', the final lines indicate the futility of acquisitiveness when the dying owner kills his ducks and turkeys to stop anyone else owning them after his death.

I would have liked to see more stories of that kind. An abdication of viewpoint is not always a bad thing, but it leaves the stories without a moral centre, and the final result is a passive neutrality.