Idling in Italy Part 5

Signor Panzini knows the present-day Borghese, their thoughts, their virtues, their absurdities, and their charm, and he has depicted them in this book in the most interesting way.

Signor Panzini is not what is called a feminist fan, and he utilizes Ginetto Sconer, who is seeking the ideal mate, as a mouthpiece for his own convictions and sentiments concerning women. Italy is likely to be one of the last countries that will yield woman the freedom for emotional and intellectual development to which she is ent.i.tled, and when it comes, as it is bound to do, it will be despite the kindly and sentimental protests and ironies of such oppositionists as Signor Panzini.

"La Madonna di Mama" ("The Madonna of Mamma") is, in addition to a splendid character study, a revelation of the disturbance caused in a gentle and meditative soul, his own, by the war. For, in reality, like so many Italian writers, Panzini is autobiographical in everything that he writes. In this book he has shown more insight of feminine psychology than in any of his other writings, though he is more successful with Donna Barberina, who represents modern Italian emotional repressions, than with the English governess, Miss Edith, who forecasts in a timid way what her countrywomen have obtained. Nevertheless, the strength of the story is the evolution of the moral and intellectual nature of Aquilino, to whom the reader is partial from the first page, and Count Hypolyte, who is "too good to be true." Aquilino is what Alfredo Panzini would have been had he encountered Conte Ippolito in his early youth. The reader who makes his acquaintance identifies him with the future glory of Italy, the type of youth who has no facilitation to success save ideals and integrity.

Many of his short stories-such as "Novelle d'Ambo i Sessi" ("Stories of Both s.e.xes"), "Le Chicche di Noretta" ("The Gewgaws of Little Nora")-have elicited great praise. To-day Panzini has the reputation of being one of the most gifted writers of Italy. He has come to his patrimony very slowly. Without being in the smallest way like George Meredith or Henry James, his writings have experienced a reception similar to theirs in so far as it has been said of them that they are hard to understand. It is difficult for a foreigner to give weight to this accusation. The reader who once gets a familiarity with them becomes an enthusiast. To him Panzini is one of the most readable of all Italian writers. To be sure, if one reads "Xantippe" it is to be expected that more or less will be said about Socrates and about the customs and habits of Athens of that day. The same is true of Diogenes and his lantern. It is also likely that when a man of literary training and taste wanders about the country, writing of his encounters, he will be likely to write of people and things, which, when others read them, will presuppose a certain culture, but the reader who has the misfortune to lack it need not hesitate to read the books of Signor Panzini. He will have a certain degree of it after he has read them and he will get possessed of it without effort. It is not at all unlikely that Signor Panzini writes his stories and novels in much the same way as he writes his dictionaries, namely, laboriously. His later writings have some indication of having been thrown off in a white heat of creative pa.s.sion without preparation or conscious premeditation, but most of his books bear the hallmarks of careful planning, methodical execution, painstaking revision, and careful survey after completion that the writer may be sure that his creation exposed to the gaze and criticism of his fellow beings shall be as perfect as he can make it both from his own knowledge and from the knowledge of others a.s.similated and integrated by him.

The position which Panzini holds in the Italian world of letters to-day is the index of the protest against the writings of D'Annunzio. Panzini is sane, normal, human, gentle, kindly. He sees the facts of life as they are; he fears the ascendancy of materialism; his hopes are that man's evolutionary progress shall be spiritual, and he does not antic.i.p.ate the advent of a few supermen who shall administer the affairs of the planet.

Alfredo Panzini may finally get a place in Italian letters comparable to that of Pascoli, and should his call to permanent happiness be delayed until he has achieved the days allotted by the psalmist he is likely to have the position in Italian letters which Joseph Conrad has in English letters to-day. This statement is not tantamount to an admission that it is to writers like Panzini that we are to look for new developments in imaginative literature. They will be found rather amongst a group of writers who are the very ant.i.thesis of him-the Futurists.

The successor to the literary fame of Giacosa is Luigi Pirandello, another schoolmaster. His earlier writings were cast as romances, but latterly he has confined himself largely to stage-pieces which reflect our moralities, satirize our conventions, and lampoon our hypocrisies. His diction is idiomatic and telling. It reminds of de Maupa.s.sant and of Bernard Shaw. Either he inherited an unusual capacity for verbal expression or he has cultivated it a.s.siduously.

He is Panzini's junior by three years, having been born in Girgenti, June 28, 1867. His father was an exporter of sulphur, and his early life was spent amongst the simple, pa.s.sionate, emotional, tradition-loving people of southern Sicily. Unlike his fellow Sicilians, Verga and Capuana, he has not utilized them to any considerable degree as the mouthpiece of his satiric comments and reflections on social life. He has taken the more sophisticated if less appealing people of northern and central Italy, and puts them in situations from which they extricate themselves or get themselves more hopelessly entangled for the reader's amus.e.m.e.nt or edification. In his last comedy, "L'uomo, la Bestia, e la Virtu" ("Man, Beast, and Virtue"), the scene is laid "in a city on the sea, it doesn't matter where," yet the characters are typically Sicilian.

After graduating from the University of Rome, Pirandello studied at Bonn and made some translations of Goethe's "Roman Elegies." Soon after he returned to Rome he published a book of verse and a book of short stories which made no particular stir. It was not until he published "Il fu Mattia Pascal" ("The Late Mattias Pascal") that he obtained any real success. Critics consider it still his best effort in the field of romance. From the standpoint of construction it deserves the commendation that it has received, but both the luck and the plans of the hero are too successful to be veristic, and the eventuations of his daily existence so far transcend ordinary experience that the reader feels the profound improbability of it all and loses interest. One pursues a novel that he may see the revelations of his own experiences or what he might wish his experiences to be under certain circ.u.mstances. When these circ.u.mstances get out of hand or when the events that transpire are so improbable, or so antipathic, that the reader cannot from his experience or imagination consider them likely or probable, then the novel does not interest him. Moreover, the Anglo-Saxon reader, unless he has lived in Italy, finds the flavor of many pa.s.sages "too high"-certain experiences are related in unnecessary detail. Like a Cubist picture the charm and the beauty disappear in proportion with the nearness with which it is viewed and the closeness with which it is examined.

In reality, Pirandello did not get his stride until he began to concern himself with social and domestic problems, such as those depicted under the t.i.tle of "Maschere Nude" ("Naked Masks"). In the play "Il Piacere dell' Onesta" ("The Pleasure of Honesty"), he pictures a new type of menage a trois: the "unhappy" husband in love with the mature daughter of an aristocratic Philistine mother, who, when she must needs have a husband for conventional satisfaction, appeals to a facile male cousin who finds in a ne'er-do-well disciple of Descartes one who is willing to act the part vicariously, the apparent quid pro quo being the payment of his gambling debts. The hypocritical, bombastic lover; the sentimental mother with a "family complex"; the anguis.h.i.+ng, pa.s.sionate daughter; the suave, aristocratic male procurer, and finally he who was to be the victim of the machinations of these experienced persons, but who proves to be the victor because he plays the game in a way new to them-that is, straight-each in turn delivers herself or himself of sentiments and convictions that reveal the social hypocrisies and conventional lies which form the scaffolding and supports of what is called "every-day life," and give Pirandello an opportunity to display his irony, his sarcasm, and his humor. The art of Pirandello is a subtle play of paradoxes and a.n.a.lyses of motives which are second nature to persons called complex, the result of inherited and acquired artificialities. To get the full effect of these paradoxes and a.n.a.lyses the closest attention of the reader and of the auditor is required, and as a matter of fact Pirandello's comedies read much better than they play. Those who know maintain that he has little capacity for stage technic, that he knows nothing of the art of the stage. Hence his comedies have not had the success of Giacosa and of Bracco.

As human doc.u.ments they depend upon their humor and veiled irony more than upon any other qualities. The humor, which seems to be obtained by simple means, is nearly always the result of an a.n.a.lysis so fine, so subtle, that sometimes one loses track of the premises on which it is founded. He compels the attention of his reader and he makes him think. Without such attention and thought the subtleties of Pirandello often escape the reader. Sometimes he labors a point almost to a tiresome degree, for instance, in the play "Cos e se vi pare" ("It's so if You Think It's so"). The central point is the ident.i.ty of a woman, which would seem, to the average individual, could be established readily beyond peradventure, but the point is-is there anything that can be established beyond peradventure? Is there any such thing as literal truth? Is not truth in reality synonymous with belief, individual or collective, or both? Discussion of questions of this sort may become very tiresome, but Pirandello has the art of mixing them up with human weaknesses and human virtues which makes the mixture not only palatable but appetizing. In his last comedies-"Il Giuoco delle Parti" ("Each One Plays His Own Role") and "Ma non e una Cosa Seria" ("But It isn't a Serious Matter")-he reverts to matrimonial tangles and attempts at disentanglement, depicting in the former the "temperamental" woman who gets what she wants, but who finds when she gets it she does not want it, and the long-suffering husband who is discerning enough to know how to handle her by conceding what she demands that he may get what he should have.

The man who usurps the conjugal privileges of the husband must also discharge his obligations. So it transpires when his temperamental wife has been insulted by some intoxicated gilded youths who by their conduct in her house provoke a scandal in the neighborhood, it is necessary for the de facto husband to challenge the most aggressive of them to a duel. During the excitement of the preparation the happy thought comes to him to have the vicarious husband fight the duel. He does so and is killed. The cause of all the trouble, the lady, is quite ignorant of this arrangement and thinks the de facto husband is battling with the most invincible sword of the city and that he will get killed, which is her desire. On returning to her house she finds her husband lunching as if nothing unusual had happened. The dramatic climax soon comes when she scornfully taunts him with having some one fight a duel for him and he replies: "Not for me but for you."

The play gives Pirandello the opportunity to display his knowledge of the sentiments and pa.s.sions of the modern "high life" individual. Although they talk and act and express familiar sentiment in a way that makes one think they are real people, in reality they are unreal. They are taken from the author's imagination rather than from real life.

The second comedy in this volume is much more meritorious than the first. The author portrays characters who well might have existed in the flesh. Gasparina, who has put twenty-seven years of continency behind her and had achieved the direction of a second-cla.s.s boarding-house, is derided and maltreated by her "guests." The most swagger of her boarders, who has been miraculously saved in a duel which followed a broken engagement, has an original idea. He will make a mock marriage with her and thus establish freedom from further love, annoyance, and duels. She sees in the proposal escape from the boarding-house. In the little villa of the country to which he sends her, under promise that she is not to make herself evident and where he is not to visit her, she blooms like a flower. In due course of time he falls in love again, and in order that he may accomplish matrimony he must free himself from Gasparina. This could be accomplished, as it never was consummated, but the messenger, an old aspirant to her favor, is on the point of having his aspirations realized when the husband in name only sees in Gasparina the woman he really loves. The curtain falls at an opportune moment before any hearts are broken or any blood is shed.

It is one of the plays of Pirandello that has had considerable success on the stage.

He is in reality a finished workman, an accomplished stylist, a happy colorist, and fecund withal. His most important of the stories are "Erma bifronte" ("Deceitful Hermes"), "La Vita Nuda" ("Naked Life"), "La Trappola" ("The Snare"), "E Domani ... lunedi" ("And To-morrow-Monday"), "Un Cavallo Nella Luna" ("A Horse in the Moon"), "Quand ero matto" ("When I was Crazy"), "Bianche e Nere" ("Blacks and Whites"); his romances, in addition to the ones already mentioned, are "I Vecchi e I Giovani" ("The Old and the Young"), and "Si Gira" ("One Turns"), the most recent and poorest of them.

It would be a mistake to convey the impression that Pirandello is universally admired in Italy. His stories and romances have an adventuresome quality that transcend ordinary experience, and his plays attempt to dispense with theatricalness and to subst.i.tute for it a subtle a.n.a.lysis of life with corrosive comment, both of which are very much resented.

It is strange that the Freudians have never explained the popularity of plays and novels concerned wholly or largely with s.e.xual relations that infract convention and law as dominancy of the unconscious mind, a "wish fulfilment" of the waking state. It may be a.s.sumed that three-fourths of those who see and read them never have, and never contemplate (with their conscious minds) having, similar experiences. They would be scandalized were any one to a.s.sume that they approved such conduct. Perhaps the explanation of the hold such literature has upon the public is the same as the interest we have in the accounts of criminals seeking to evade apprehension. It is not that we sympathize in any way with the malefactor. We are lawmaking, law-abiding, law-upholding citizens, and we know he ought not to escape, and, naturally, we hope he will be caught. However, we cannot help thinking what we would do confronted with his predicament. We feel that in his place we could circ.u.mvent the sleuths and overcome what would be to the ordinary person insuperable obstacles. Thus we divert ourselves imagining what we would do if we were adulterous husbands, lecherous wives, lubricitous wooers, vicarious spouses, while a.s.suring ourselves we are not and could never be, and plume ourselves that we could conduct ourselves even in nefariousness in such a way as to escape detection or, if detected, to disarm criticism. Meanwhile we enjoy being virtue-rewarded and vice-punished, for it is only upon the stage or in books that it happens, save in exceptional instances.

CHAPTER VII IMPROVISIONAL ITALIAN LITERATURE OF TO-DAY AND YESTERDAY

I never fully appreciated how hazardous it is to speak of the literature of a foreign country until I read an article in the Tribuna of Rome, signed Mario Vinciguerra, on Michaud's "Mystiques et Realistes Anglo-Saxons," which seeks to disparage the originality of some of our Transcendentalists, particularly Emerson, and to trace tendencies in our literature. I hope that I may be more successful in reviewing some of Italy's recent literature and in making an estimate of the merit of those who are responsible for it than Signor Vinciguerra, who says the two most potent romancers of living American writers are Jack London and Upton Sinclair. At least I shall not say that Guido da Verona and Salvator Gotta are the most potent romancers of Italy, and even I shall not go so far as to say that Luciano Zuccoli is. Any writer who would maintain that "Before the breaking out of the war the books that made the greatest stir in the United States were Upton Sinclair's 'A Captain of Industry,' 'The Jungle,' 'The Metropolis,' and Jack London's 'The Iron Heel,'" would not write himself so hopelessly ignorant of American literature as he would were he to claim that Harold Bell Wright and Rex Beach were our leading novelists. Such contention would show either unfamiliarity with our literature or dearth of understanding.

Previous to the war there was no such pouring out of literature in Italy as there was in England, and there were few writers of fiction whose output or content could be compared with that of Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett, Mr. Hugh Walpole, Mr. Gilbert Cannan, Mr. Compton Mackenzie, Mr. D. H. Lawrence, and others. D'Annunzio had long since ceased to write romances. Matilda Serao was in the twilight of her years and literary career. Grazia Deledda was displaying stereotypy and Zuccoli reploughed the familiar acre. French fiction was the favorite pabulum of the Italian who would kill time, dispel ennui, and combat dearth. Since then, however, there has been a great change and there is every indication that Italians will provide literature for their countrymen which will at least obviate the necessity of importation.

That it has not yet been accomplished, however, must be admitted in the beginning. The young writers are like birds trying their wings, aerial pilots striving for alt.i.tude tests. From their performances one is justified in hoping, indeed believing, that they will go far and soar high, but up to date Verga dominates the field of Italian fiction just as Hardy dominates the field of English fiction.

No reference to the literature of to-day should fail to take note of the fact that much of the most important and suggestive fiction does not appear in book form, or at least not for a long time, but in periodicals such as the monthlies and quarterlies, and also in such publications as Novella and Comoedia. No one can gain a familiarity with the hundred or more active writers of fiction in Italy who does not see and read such publications. They lend themselves readily to brevity and to that speeding up which the Futurists urge, and they tend to do away with the long-drawn-out descriptions which are the despair of the average reader.

Another feature of the newer literature which augurs well for it is that its theme is not wholly portrayal of the genesic instinct and the multiform perversions to which it has been subject by culture and which Christianity has been unable materially to influence. We realize how large the subject has bulked in the literature of every nation, but it is probably not beyond the truth to say that it has bulked larger in the modern literature of Italy even than of France.

It is natural that recent literature has begun to occupy itself with the conditions of the people and to display awareness of the new significance that they are giving to the words liberty and equality, and an attempt is being made to reconcile preaching and practising in their bearings on life here and hereafter.

The acceptable fiction of to-day will reflect in some measure the world thought, or it will soothe man's cravings for a.s.surance of future life and strengthen his belief in it. It is idle to deny that the pitch of man's thought to-day is materialistic, though his unconscious mind is steeped in the mystic. Could we but teach future generations the pleasure-potency of the imagination, we should give them an a.s.set that would enhance the usefulness and efficiency of their lives comparable to health. But for some years at least there has been a mistaken notion that the chief sources of pleasure are responding to the call of the instincts, the fortuitous offerings of chance, and awaiting the day when the vital sap will return from the branches of that universal tree upon which we are the leaves to the trunk, that the spirit may be restored to the Infinite. "Poor vaunt of life, indeed, were man but formed to feed on joy, to solely seek and find and feast."

Pedagogy has never concerned itself with our imaginative life. That is left to endowment and to chance, which sometimes shows itself in the shape of a literary critic. Fortunate, indeed, is the people or nation that breeds competent critics, it matters not what field of activity they cultivate, letters, science, or theology. Italy has had many such, but there is a greater dearth of them now than ever before. With the exception of Benedetto Croce there is perhaps no one of more than national reputation.

It is, perhaps, unwise to select from the considerable number of present-day literary critics the names of a few, but I hazard it. Emilio Cecchi, of the Rome Tribuna, is a versatile, scholarly writer, a thoughtful, judicious estimator of his fellow writers' works, and a critic who is not obsessed with the impulse that is supposed to dominate a certain type of Irishman, namely, to hit a head whenever he sees it. Giuseppe Prezzolini, who has been very intimate with the Florentine group headed by Papini and who has written a critical estimate of his writings and made a glowing statement of his personal charms, has a sympathy and admiration for the writers of what may be called the new school. That does not prevent him from being a keen observer, a logical thinker with a judicious capacity to weigh the evidence presented by his fellow writers in their claim for popularity and fame. He is a type of literary man new to Italy, a keen critic, a clear thinker, a master of literary expression who devotes much of his energy to his publis.h.i.+ng-house and to La Voce. His writings are chiefly political and critical, "Il Sarto Spirituale" ("The Spiritual Tailor"), "L'Arte di Persuadere" ("The Art of Persuading"), "Cos' e il Modernismo?" ("What is Modernism?"). He has done more to introduce and bring forward the potent group of young writers than any one in Italy.

Lionello Fiumi, a young poet and critic, has published contributions that are noteworthy, but he has given no real capacity to a.n.a.lyze evidence, to sum it up, or to interpret it judiciously. His last effort to prove that Corrado Giovi is the poetic sun of Italy to-day was anaemic and feeble. The ant.i.thesis of him is Gherardo Marone, who thinks that Futurism and anarchism are synonymous, but the agnostic in religion sees no choice between Catholicism and Presbyterianism. He also maintains the extraordinary position that a great poet must needs be a great thinker. He is a very young man and his "Difesa di Dulcinea" ("Defense of Dulcinea") gives promise that when he gets in his stride he will go near the winning post.

Vincenzo Cardarelli is a literary critic whose writings are characterized by erudition, sympathy, understanding, and a sense of responsibility. He has published a volume of poems ent.i.tled "Prologhi" in line with the symbolist school of France, and especially Stephane Mallarme.

Another critic who senses the trend of Italian literature and puts correct interpretation upon it is G. A. Borghese.

Two of the popular writers of fiction of to-day, Alfredo Panzini and Luigi Pirandello, I have discussed in a separate chapter.

Luciano Zuccoli is the most conspicuous and successful exponent in Italy of the type of fiction which was thrown upon the world for the first time now nearly two hundred years ago by Samuel Richardson, father of the novel of sentimental a.n.a.lysis. Though Zuccoli has a score of novels and romances to his credit, he would seem to be now at the height of his fecundity. The literary school in Italy which is the outgrowth of the Futuristic movement points the contemptuous finger at him and scoffs at his productions, but he has, nevertheless, a large following and is a writer of much skill. His success depends largely upon taking characters of the Borghesia and exposing them to the ordinary incidents of life, such as love, matrimony, war, politics, and then depicting what comes "naturally" to some of the victims: disillusionment tugging at the leash until it snaps the illicit splicing of it to another snapped leash (for there is no divorce in Italy); conflict between patriotism and pacifism, and between sentiment and idealism from a political, social, and personal point of view. He has got far away from the simpler delineations of his earlier books, such as "La Freccia nel Fianco" ("The Arrow in the Flank"), in which the love of a sentimental girl of eighteen for a boy of eight, the son of a most dissolute n.o.ble who tends to follow in his father's footsteps, is featured, and the meticulous discussion of the daily life of male and female sybarites, who have chosen the smooth and easy road to destruction as it travels through Italy's wickedest city, Milan, as in "Fortunato in Amore" and have come to keep what might be called better company, the company of those whose infraction of convention is conditioned more by environment than by determination.

"L'Amore non c'e piu" ("There Is No More Love") and "Il Maleficio occulto" ("Witchcraft") are other popular romances.

Virgilio Brocchi is a similar writer, though his writings have never had similar popularity. His most meritorious books have been "Mite" and "Le Aquile." His later books, such as "Isola Sonante," show the author's progress in literary craftsmans.h.i.+p. His last book, "Secondo il Cuor mio" ("According to My Heart"), shows that he has had his ear to the ground and has noticed that the chariot labelled "Public Taste in Letters" is being driven on a new road. There is a note of idealism in the conduct of Gigi Leoni, the artist pa.s.sionately devoted to his art, in love with Merine Dialli, proud and rich; he refuses to accept her suggestion that he relinquish his art and do something that will lead to material success. After she has made a failure in matrimony with an army officer and returns to the artist, Zuccoli succeeds in drawing with masterly strokes the portrait of a real hero, who, when he perishes later on the field of battle, excites unreservedly the admiration of his readers. In reality it is a book in which pa.s.sion, of life or of the senses, as it sways an attractive man full of n.o.bility and of dreams, is depicted in the traditional idealistic manner.

The Harold Bell Wright of Italian fiction is Guido Da Verona, and this does Mr. Wright an injustice, for he has never written p.o.r.nographically and Signor Da Verona has rarely written otherwise. But he is Italy's best-seller. It is depressing to think that really great romances, like the "I Malavoglia" of Verga, stories such as Capuana's "Pa.s.sa L'Amore," or Renato Fucini's, or even Panzini's "La Madonna di Mama," should have a sale of only a few thousand copies, while books of the character of "Mimi Bluette," the flower of Signor Da Verona's garden, should go up toward the hundred-thousand mark. It is an index of the salaciousness of the average person, whoever he may be. Any review of Italy's recent literature must mention "The Woman Who Invented Love," "Life Begins To-morrow," if for no other purpose than to show that there is a kind of literature in every country which has a great popularity. In Belgium its clientele is found in the prurient of other countries; in France the "best people" do not read it or say they do not; in England the public censor prohibits it; and we have Mr. Comstock and his successors. "Madeline," which has recently cost its guiltless publisher a fine, is "soft stuff" compared with "Mimi Bluette," and I doubt if Mr. George Moore could revoke any memories of his dead life that could hold a candle to some of Signor Da Verona's actual life.

There is little to be said in favor of his books that could not be said for narcotic-taking, gambling-h.e.l.ls, and underworld tango palaces. They have a glamour about them and an aroma that appeals to the feeble-minded, the inherently decadent, and the ennuyed idle. It is a realism whose reality exists only in a mind made lubricitous by cupidity.

Marino Moretti is one of the young writers whose short stories and romances have found much favor. There is an atmosphere of triviality, of lightness, of inconsequentiality about his writings which is an important part of his art. In reality he is a finished technician and an artist with a wonderful mastery of perspective and of color, and a commendable capacity for expression. His particular charm is that he creates an atmosphere or a situation, but does not insist upon giving a chemical a.n.a.lysis or physical description of either. When he takes you to a drawing-room or to the bathing-beach at the fas.h.i.+onable hour he does not insist on presenting you to every one or giving you a detailed history of their lives and particularly of their amatory tidal waves. Although he seems to give his clientele soft food, he does not insist on spoon-feeding them. In the guise of pap he gives them often thought-making pabulum.

Some of his popular books are "Il Sole del Sabato" ("Sat.u.r.day's Sun"), "Guenda," "La Voce di Dio" ("The Voice of G.o.d"), and "Adamo ed Eva."

Antonio Beltramelli is another writer who has studied literary form to great purpose and with it he combines imaginative gifts of an exceptional order. His earlier books, short stories ent.i.tled "Anna Perena" and "I Primogeniti" ("First-born Sons"), were well received. He has recently come back to similar presentations in "La Vigna Vendemmiata" ("The Harvested Vineyard"), which while not revealing the spiritual growth which his admirers expected from him, shows him, nevertheless, to be a man of parts. His chief defect is his ignorance of behavioristic psychology which is nowhere better shown than in this collection of short stories, "La Madre," for instance. Moreover, it is an ambitious writer who makes a story of these unromantic facts; a stupid man with some of the characteristics of the ox and the rat is married to a gross, slovenly creature who deceives him. A friendly neighbor opens his eyes and he finds her and her paramour in the brake and cane around the vineyard. On his way thence he encounters the parish priest and asks him if one would be justified in meting out personal punishment to such transgressors. "Perhaps yes, perhaps no" is the reply. When he comes upon the guilty couple he kills the man with the blow of a stick, then falls back upon the priest's words for justification.

"Gli Uomini Rossi" ("The Red Men") is his best-known romance. He has read and still reads Cervantes and Rabelais. Had he the gift of artistic presentation he might become a great novelist, but until now he has confounded embellishment with natural beauty.

Among the fiction that has appeared in Italy during the past year a few books call for mention, not because of their intrinsic merit but because it is indicative of the change that is going on in the minds of the common people which reflects particularly the thought now being given to social and psychological questions.

The American reader of Italian fiction cannot fail to be impressed with the poverty of subject-matter which it displays. This is explained partly by the fact that it is sometimes biographical and very often autobiographical-moreover, the family and social and religious customs of Italy do not make for novelty or variety in individual life. The zone in which all the details of existence is predetermined by convention extends much farther with them both up and down the social scale than with us. If man is independent of it to some extent woman is not, and since there is no object in chronicling the obvious, popular Italian fiction is apt to deal with excursions of man beyond his own circle and cla.s.s. Another thing that has to be kept in mind is the position of women. The important woman in the life of the majority of Italians is the mother, not the wife. She is on terms of equality with her son and she retains much of the authority of the Roman matron in her children's married life. This it need scarcely be said is changing with the eternal flux of things.

Italy of to-day is a very new country. Whenever we as a nation do something which the Italians consider gauche or raw, and they are obliged to dislocate an inherent politeness by mention of it, they excuse us because we are so young. So one excuses an infant for some verbal or conductual infraction. In reality we are about a century older than Italy of to-day, and we have spent that time developing a "manner" that reflects our protracted habituation to freedom. That it is sometimes masked by arrogance and self-satisfaction is to be regretted. Hence our indifference to convention which is often painful to the foreigner. It is a mistake to think that it is only the upper cla.s.ses of Italy who are beholden to unwritten convention and customs. In truth, subscription to them is more mandatory amongst the Borghesia and Il Popolo. With the gradual dissemination and acceptation of the doctrines of socialism, the equal rights of women, and the widening sphere of culture through universal education, many of the shackling conventions of to-day will disappear. The younger workers are blazing the way. Of those who herald this change Mario Mariani must be heeded. In "La Casa dell' Uomo" ("The House of Man"), he makes a satiric onslaught against the amorous, avid of money and of pleasure, who are ready to sacrifice every basic virtue in order to obtain them. After presenting a picture of the present-day cages of human beings he tells his story through the mouth and diary of the janitress of a modern apartment-house, who being deprived by time of her pulchritude and sensuous appeal, has been obliged to forego her chosen profession, that of Mrs. Warren, and to gain her livelihood in the sweat of her brow. She has visions of a day when she can no longer even do that, and yet must needs have food, raiment, and shelter; so she keeps a diary which sets forth the flagrancies of the tenants, men, women, and children. She does not admit that the entries are the wythes of blackmail. She salves such conscience as has survived her life of sin by a.s.suring herself that the entries in the book are to a.s.suage literary growing pains. When Signor Mariani obtained the doc.u.ments by fabrication or by stealth he found himself in possession of the "characters" of many individuals, young and old, who present a strange similarity to those we encounter in daily life. He has seen fit to publish them without saying whether it was art or bread that was the incentive, and they const.i.tute a serious charge against society. The wonder is that if such things exist the social fabric conserves the appearance of well-being. In truth, life is not a mask behind which the wearer laughs, if this diary is to be believed. It is in reality a tragedy made up of a tissue of hypocrisies, ba.n.a.lities, sordid commonplaces, inimical to joy, subversive of pleasure, and destructive of happiness.

It is obvious that de Maupa.s.sant is the author's model. Despite a certain vivacity of form, his tales are in substance very old-fas.h.i.+oned and his characters are so sordid and sensual that their actions and their fate from an artistic point of view fail to interest.

In "Smorfia dell' anima" ("Grimaces of the Soul"), the central theme is that all people who defy accepted morals are much more honest and happy than those who hypocritically accept convention but do not conform to the moral laws which underlie them. There is a certain amount of truth in this view, but it will not stand too much insistence.

Though Signor Mariani's books are not ent.i.tled to laudation, they, with his commentual writing, encourage us to await the advent of his full powers with a sincere belief that he will arrive in Italian letters.

Gino Rocca is a young Milanese writer who has returned from the war with ideas and capacity to express them. His novel "L'Uragano" is what is popularly called powerful. It is the same old theme, love and adultery, but it introduces what may be called new reactions. It is a story of a young man who, "temperamentally unfit" to live in the refined and shut-in atmosphere of his parental home, goes to Milan and does successfully newspaper work while giving himself copiously to what is called a life of sin. The picture of this life is one with which readers of modern French fiction are familiar. Through the mediation of a sympathetic aunt he encounters a lady burdened with an unworthy husband, who makes such appeal to him that he abandons the gaming-table and the underworld, but in such a way as to leave the impression that it would have been only temporary had not the call to arms put them beyond his reach. In the army and in the hospital, while idealizing his innamorata he has experiences which show him the perfidy of the feminine human heart. When he returns to Milan he realizes that even with his enriched experience he is not yet the man who understands women, for he has yet to learn of the inconstancy of her to whom he attributed all the virtues. This discovery gives the writer an opportunity to depict a profound emotional storm from which the novel gets its name and from which the hero emerges a better man.

There is nothing noteworthy in the book except its character delineation. It is a novel in so far as it is an exact and complete reproduction of social surroundings or environment, but photographs are often spoiled by being colored. It shows the writer to have a mastery of literary technic and an unusual capacity for expression.

Another writer who has shown himself a master of verbal structure and adept in the delineation of character, a student of psychological reactions and facile artist of the environment in which they are displayed, is Raffaele Calzini. His first short stories, "La Vedova Scaltra" ("The Wary Widow"), published seven or eight years ago, were hailed by some critics as the work of a writer of potential distinction. They are coloristic or impressionistic stories. Although he has not yet given proof that he will earn enduring fame, he is nevertheless one of the most promising of the younger writers, and, although he is not prolific, each succeeding publication has added to his fame. His last contribution is a comedy ent.i.tled "Le Fedelta" ("Fidelity").